


Those Who Do Not Learn from History

by Utari



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Constructed Language, Hurt/Comfort, Language Barrier, M/M, Slavery, conlang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Utari/pseuds/Utari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate universe.  In this world, there was no Sgrub session, and a few events from the human space age have happened earlier, but these are only minorly related to the plot.  After a failed Alternian invasion of Earth, humans managed to turn the tide and end up winning the war, and enslaved the entirety of the Alternian people.  </p>
<p>John decides to purchase a troll without being fully aware of the reality of the situation, instead believing much of "common knowledge" instead, and realizes the reality of what humanity has really done and tries his best to cope with a language and cultural barrier and create an environment for his new troll to live in.</p>
<p>Rating and warnings are for later chapters, and are a bit conservative, but I prefer to rate my fics higher if I'm on the fence about a rating or warning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Market

**Author's Note:**

> (Note: If you aren't interested in conlangs or linguistics, you can probably safely skip this intro ^_^)
> 
> I created a conlang for Alternian which I use in this. Before I started, I thought I would've been the first to do so. When I was fairly well through the design, I decided on a whim to see if anyone else had done so and found several other people have created an Alternian language. Then I thought that at least I might be the first to use one in a fic, but found that someone had already done that as well! >_<
> 
> I guess I should feel happy that conlanging has moved outside the realm of JRR Tolkien and ultra-language nerds! Anyway, I'll be providing an interlinear gloss at the end of the chapters, as well as an English translation.
> 
> While I'm still fine-tuning some details of Alternian (or in this case, I'm calling it proto-Alternian (PA) since I figure that with the trolls being insectoid and raised largely alone, they'd have genetic memory of their language which would mean that the language spoken now would've been the same for thousands of years.
> 
> I have a bit of a background in linguistics, so while PA is my first conlang, it's rather complete in that it's a language unto itself and is not simply a relex of English. It's a polysynthetic, agglutinating, exclusively suffixing, head-marking language. I have the phonetics, phonology and phonotactics completed, and the morphology and syntax are mostly completed as well. I'm mainly just filling in a few gaps by creating new particles as the need arises (I have about 70 particles already defined, can you tell that I like agglutinating languages yet ^_^ )
> 
> Its phonology does make use of lots of fricatives, and the velar fricative is a more common phoneme, which tends to have a reputation of a cheap way to create a language that sounds "rough" for a violent species like Orcs or Klingons, but I actually think the velar fricative sounds rather pleasant. PA is actually a rather vocalic language, and doesn't even have voiced stops or fricatives at all, which is another way that people try to create a "rough" sounding language. Its syllable structure is (C)(R)V(C) with R being a glide (r, l, w, j) so while it's rather vocalic because of that, I think I was able to strike a nice balance between going for a "cheap" and "rough" sounding language and created a nice juxtaposition of smooth and pleasant vs. what some would consider to be harsh (the common use of fricatives).
> 
> I actually wanted PA to sound rather pleasant, but to have a phonology different enough from English that it would still seem foreign. I think it works well enough, provided you think that palatal and velar fricatives sound pleasant the way I do. By virtue of its polysynthesis and highly agglutinating nature, PA has what English speakers would consider to be very long words. However, these "words" often translate into entire sentences in English, as is typical for polysynthetic or highly agglutinating languages.
> 
> It has only 5 vowels and they're the same "basic" vowels found in languages like Spanish and Japanese. Consonants are the same as their IPA counterparts, with the exception of ř which is the trilled fricative similar to the one found in Czech. Aspiration is phonemic on stops, which is denoted by a "tick" <p, t, k> vs. <ṕ, t́, ḱ>. The interdental fricative is represented by a thorn <þ> rather than a theta <θ>. The alveopalatal affricate is represented as <č> instead of <tʃ>. That's pretty much all one needs to know to be able to pronounce it. To reiterate, <x> is a velar fricative, so it's NOT pronounced like the "eks" in "X-ray" or in "saxophone". Look it up and listen to a recording of it if you're not familiar ^_^.
> 
> Anyway, I think I've gotten my inner linguistics geek-out done and finished now, so on to the fic! ^_^

Today is the day you've reached the age where you can legally own a troll. Your dad passed away few years ago, and you've been looking forward to having someone around the house for some companionship.

Fortunately though, it wasn't an untimely death and he had time to create a trust fund which gives you enough money each month to buy food, pay the bills, plus a little extra for whatever you'd like to do with it. Usually you save part of it and spend the rest on video-games, movies, and whatnot. It's not much beyond the basics; you certainly had more money when your dad was around, but it's enough to live on with just enough left over to buy nice things every once and a while. 

Since your dad arranged to have the house paid off with his life-insurance when he died, you're in a pretty nice situation financially, though there wasn't enough left to take care of college when the day comes. Oh, well. At least with a free place to stay and your food budget covered for the rest of your life, it won't be that hard to hold a part-time job and go to school.

You received a letter today saying that your monthly stipend will be increasing from now on, to cover the added cost of taking care of a troll, and you'll be getting a one-time bonus that will be enough to cover the cost of buying one. Your dad thought of everything, you really miss him.

You decide not to dilly-dally anymore and, cash in hand, catch a bus out towards Seattle to the closest outdoor marketplace where trolls are sold. You've never really questioned why humans use trolls as slaves, but you did ask your dad some questions about it when you were younger.

He said that the trolls tried to invade Earth. They started a war that Earth only narrowly managed to win. The trolls had superior technology and it wasn't until one of their spaceships crash-landed and was captured and had its technology reverse-engineered that the war started to turn in our favor. After that, Earth invaded Alternia and somehow the trolls ended up being used as slaves by humans. This happened at least a hundred years ago, so their use is very entrenched in human society at this point.

It's common knowledge that trolls are less intelligent than humans, since they had interstellar spaceflight when Earth had only barely explored the Moon and Mars. Though you once asked your dad how they could be less intelligent than humans if they were so much more advanced back then; he told you not to believe everything you hear and left it at that. Sometimes he wouldn't give a straight answer to your questions because he wanted you to think for yourself.

It was also common knowledge that, due to the trolls' inherent violent tendencies, they must be kept in isolation or bondage for their own good; they'd run amok and kill each other if they were allowed to roam free as they'd done for millennia on Alternia.  
Since they're born with such strong war-like traits, they often have to be beaten into submission since they don't respect anyone or anything that's weak. Humans were doing them a favor by keeping them from engaging in their war-like tendencies. Your dad frequently reminded you that they were living beings and should be treated with the respect all living beings deserve, but you wondered who was right. It was hard trying to choose between your him being right and everyone else in the world being right. Though your dad was right often enough that you developed a strong sense of trust in his words. Besides, you don't think you could really beat a troll the way you saw other people did in the movies. If a dog could be trained without hitting it, certainly a troll could.

You've rarely seen trolls in real life though. People keep them indoors so much that it's a rare sight to see one anywhere but in someone else's house. They're usually told to keep away from guests too, on penalty of severe punishment, so even when you've gone to other peoples houses you've almost never seen their trolls. The was one time that you went over to a friend's house and caught a brief glimpse of one, but it quickly closed the door when it saw you, not having heard you come in. It looked terrified when it did. You'd felt bad, but what could you have done?

You arrive at your destination after a long ride and walk around the marketplace. It's late, but the sun is still up. You walk around, past various vendors' stalls where they have large tents and canopies to protect them from either the sun or the rain, both of which can be a force to reckon with in the Pacific northwest. As you do so, you feel horrified that all the trolls you walk by are barely moving in their cages. The few that actually do look at you, do so with cold eyes that seem to be staring far away and looking through you rather than at you.  
They look so blank, but there's an underlying fear and terror you can see behind them. These aren't the happy trolls they show in movies, who are glad to do serve their masters.

You begin to think that maybe you don't really want a troll after all. You'd always pictured them as either fierce warriors which only through great effort were tamed; their fighting spirit still strong and alive, or as gentle people who were happy to have a civilization that was able to provide them enough structure and civility to allow them to live without engaging in their typical savagery. They looked so happy on TV, but all of the trolls here looked completely broken as human beings. Well, they weren't actually human, but if it weren't for the horns, the gray skin, the yellow eyes, the sharp teeth, and the claws, they would've looked like any other ordinary human. You couldn't help but see them more as equals now that you'd come face-to-face with so many of them. As cold and dead as their eyes had seemed, they were still showing enough emotion deep in their souls that you couldn't help your stomach turning at the sight of them.

Suddenly hearing a short commotion, you turn. Someone in the distance is standing near a troll's cage. You walk closer to see what's going on but before you get too near, the person enters the cage and begins violently beating the troll inside. You stop, paralysed with shock as you see the troll being bludgeoned with some kind of club or other blunt object. After the initial yelp, it remained silent as the man continued to beat it, eventually curling up into a ball in a futile attempt to protect itself. After what seems like an eternity, the man stops and walks away, clearly still angry, and enters a nearby tent.

You cautiously walk over to the troll. As much as you want to get out of here and never look back, you feel like you _have_ to see if he's okay.

"Hey, are you OK?" you say.

He gives no response, so you bend down and cautiously extend a hand through the bars and gently rub your finger up and down on his arm a few times before pulling it out of the cage again. He turns and gives you an annoyed look, before hauling himself up. He's obviously in pain and trying to hide it, and obviously prideful in that he almost seems to be challenging you to try showing concern for him again in the way he just glares at you with contempt.

You stand and stare at him. You can't help but think of how attractive he is. You'd never have thought you could look at a troll like that, they weren't even human after all, but this day has shattered a lot of long-held preconceptions. He continues to stare at you as he takes a step forward, he's close enough to grab you through the bars but you stand your ground, though more from an absence of sense than a desire to stand up to him.

He continues to glare at you, yet you still refuse to back down. One of the cuts on his face has bled enough that it's about to drip from the side of his chin. It's red, the same color as yours. You've never seen a troll with red blood before. You absent-mindedly reach a hand out and wipe it away. Upon contacting with his face, he takes a step back, then shouts at you.

"to six pam puťlinčař korteŋna xramhexpel kut!"

Shocked, you take a step back, but not before noticing something in his eyes the moment you touched his face. It was almost as if for the briefest of moments, he felt comforted by your touch before reacting in anger the way he did. You don't know why, but you feel like you have some kind of connection with this troll now. You take a step back and start turn away, keeping your gaze on him as long as you can. You wipe the spot of blood from your fingers with a paper napkin you happen to have in your pocket and head towards the tent nearby.

Before entering, you hear part of a conversation where one of them is clearly not happy and is lamenting the fact that he's lost five hundred dollars.

As you walk into the tent nearby, you find two men in there, one sitting at a table looking over a ledger of some kind, and the other standing over his shoulder.

"May I help you?", the standing man says.

"I'd like to buy a troll."

"Certainly! Is this your first one? I have a several that have been quite well trained. I'll show you one that's quite tame and-"

"No, I want that one", you say, pointing at the wall of the tent in the direction of the troll you whose blood you're now carrying in your pocket, knowing that it's the only one in that direction.

He shakes his head, "That troll is defective. I've tried to get him to behave right, but he won't take. He refuses to speak English, refuses any command I give him, and has a bad attitude on top of that. I thought I could whip him into shape. I knew he was bad when I bought him, but he's incorrigible. I'm just going to have to ki- get rid of him", he corrects himself.

"I just saw him and I think he'll listen to me."

The man laughs, "If five experienced slave-masters couldn't tame him, there's no way a boy like you can."

"I'll prove it to you, come with me", you say as you walk out of the tent, hoping that you're not wrong in the huge gamble you're about to take.

The man follows, but clearly only for his own amusement.

"Well, go ahead", he says, standing at the cage. 

The troll glares at you.

"Sit down", you say, motioning with your hand.

The troll folds his arms and glares at you the same, defiant way he did previously.

The man laughs.

You take a step forward. You know he's going to be killed if you can't buy him, and you know the man won't sell a potentially violent slave to someone your age. You shudder at the thought of him being put to death for no reason than other than his hatred of being a slave.

"Please", your voice is slightly trembling, "Please, sit down", you motion with your hand again.

The troll glares at you for a moment longer before looking at the man, then back at you. He seems to understand that something is going on and, ever so grudgingly, and without breaking his defiant stare, he slowly sits down.

"See?" you say to the man.

"I don't know", he's clearly surprised, "What if he tries to bite you?"

"He won't do that, see?" you say as you extend your arm through the bars and put your hand on his head. The troll lets out a low growl but does nothing.

By this point, the other man has joined you. "There's no way he wouldn't have tried to rip somebody else's arm out of his socket", he says to the slave-master in a way that shows deference to him, "Maybe he likes him? Might as well sell him to the boy."

You take your arm out of the cage. It's pretty clear the troll doesn't like it resting on his head. The man shakes his head in disbelief, "Come on", he says as he motions you back to the tent.

Taking the chair the other man had been sitting in previously, he pulls out various pieces of paperwork from various drawers and mutters to himself, "Fifteen years and I've never seen a thing like that. I guess my cousin said he once took in a cat that destroyed just about everyone else's house, but seemed to get along just fine with him.  
The cat never did take much of a liking to anyone else though. Might wanna keep this troll on a tight leash and lock 'em up if you have company over."

Piling up the papers neatly, he gets a weird look in his eye. "That troll is two-thousand dollars, you've got the money?"

As nervous as you've been up until now, you feel a strange surge inside of you. "Five hundred", you offer confidently.

The man laughs mockingly, "I don't think you know how this negotiation stuff works kid, you try to shave a little off the top, not butcher it into little pieces."

"You paid five hundred for him, and you're going to kill him because you know nobody else will buy him. At five hundred you break even", you feel like you're channeling the strength of your late father since you feel no fear towards his intimidation tactics.

The man is clearly stunned and at a loss for words, obviously not aware that you'd heard his conversation earlier. "It's better than nothin' boss" the other man says to him.

"Shut up!" he snaps. The other man sheepishly lowers his head. "One thousand" he counters.

"Six hundred", you respond.

He grits his teeth, "Look kid, I've still gotta pay my employees, feed myself, and pay for the costs of feeding him up 'til now."

"Seven fifty", you say, "Or five-hundred in the hole, it's up to you."

He's clearly boiling with rage knowing that you've got him over a barrel. "Alright you little shit, but don't let me see you here again. If you don't like him, _you_ find a way to get rid of him, don't try to return him to me", he says as he stands up in a huff. "You finish this, I'm going home", he commands the other man as he picks up a coat and disappears from the tent.

The other man visibly relaxes as the other one leaves. He talks you through signing some forms, explaining them along the way. They're not liable for any damage the troll does, this is an all-sales-final transaction, basic care of trolls, and other miscellaneous stuff. He stops mid-way through and calls for another attendant, telling them to get the troll ready while you fill out the paperwork.

He tries to make nervous small talk with you but you're focused on the paperwork and gently blow him off a few times and he just sits there quietly for the remainder of the session. 

You sign the last form and hand it back to him, whereupon he smiles, "You've just bought yourself a troll!"

It sickens you at how he trivializes slavery, and you feel a pang of guilt at being a participant of this horrible system now, but you pledge to yourself that you'll give him a good home. No, even that sounds too much like you're taking care of an animal. You pledge that you're going to treat him like an equal. By law, he may be a slave outside of your house, but inside of it he's going to be another person living with you. You will never treat him like a slave.

You turn and stand as someone enters the tent, the troll quite literally in tow. He's been fitted with a collar, upon which both his hands have been affixed via a metal ring on a pair of leather cuffs around his wrists; it looks like he's begging with his wrists attached to the collar in such a way. A thick leather leash has been attached to the same ring on the collar to which his wrists are attached. Most disturbing of all, he's had a leather strap run under his chin and over the front of his mouth, then around the back of his head so that he can't open his mouth to bite anyone, let alone talk.

You pause in shock, not knowing that they did things like that to trolls. You feel a pang of guilt and hope he understands you didn't mean for this to happen. He simply rolls his eyes at you when he notices you staring.

"Go ahead kid", the man says.

You reach out with a trembling hand and take hold of the leash and lead him out of the tent. You pull out your phone and call for a cab while you walk towards the market's exit. You sit in silence, afraid to look at him, until the cab comes. The cabbie rolls down his window and gives the troll a good looking over.

"Those things secure?" he asks.

"The guys here did it, so I guess so", you respond.

The cabbie shrugs, "C'mon in then."

You sit in the back with the troll and give the cabbie your address. After making a joke about you being from the countryside, he talks about various things concerning trolls, none of which you haven't heard before, so you tune him out, occasionally giving a short, 'Uh-huh' in response. You're more focused on your troll. You're starting to realize how big of an undertaking you've gotten yourself into now. You're going to have to take care of him and make sure he's happy somehow, and you haven't the foggiest idea of how to proceed.

You steal a quick glance at him now and then; his head is turned and he's watching the scenery go by. It's a typical day in the Pacific northwest, rainy. You turn onto the freeway and head out of Seattle back to your more modest sized town. You've never been very partial to larger cities, and you're happy to be heading home.

The troll turns his head and leans a bit to get a better look at something and you feel the leash pull in your hand. He turns back glaring at you, and you realize you're still gripping it tightly in your hands.

"Sorry", you mutter under your breath.

You then bundle up the leash and drop it into his lap, making it obvious you have no intention of subjugating him. He looks down at it and then back to you, unsure of what to make of the situation. You turn your head away and look out the window, trying to drive the point home that you don't care about holding onto the the leash.

The ride is mostly uneventful, though you do look over at him every now and then. Sometimes he's staring at you, but he mostly looks outside at the scenery. There's so much open space out here between towns, you wonder if he's dreaming of freedom or trying to imagine what it would be like to run through the open fields.

You reach your home and the drizzling rain has picked up to a heavier downpour, so you quickly pay the cabbie and lead the troll by his arm to your porch; there's no way you're using the leash to lead him.

You fumble for your keys for a moment, shielded from the rain by your porch, and then open the door and lead him in. You don't even think to change your clothes, in the context of living in the Pacific northwest, they're not that wet.

You turn to him, "Hold still and I'll get those", you say as you reach out with a key. You unlatch his hands from his collar, before separating them from one another. He unbuckles and removes the cuffs himself.

"Um, do you want me to get that?" you say pointing to the muzzle on his head as he rubs his wrists.

He seizes up a bit, and raises his hands in a defensive manner, but allows you to remove the muzzle, all the while eyeing you suspiciously.

"Uh, I'll get that too", you say as you reach out towards the collar on his neck. He hisses in response and swats your hands away. "Okay, you do it", you say as you hold out the key in front of you.

"keťʂetna korteŋnerolitarhalnixatjeʂa, ʃuxlarxatje ťle huřetxatjelara"

"I'm sorry?"

"korteŋna", he says, dismissively.

He removes the thick leather collar, revealing the tracking collar underneath it. It consists of a small, thin transmitter about two centimeters in diameter, connected to an equally thin band. They're both so thin, that they've been bonded semi-permanently to the skin with a micro-cellular adhesive. A special tool is required to remove it. You remember when you went to a fair with your father once, and they had them as a novelty bracelet one could wear for the day.

The advantage of using this Alternian technology as a collar is that, without having access to the tool, it's not removable unless they gouge out their skin along with it, which in and of itself would mark them as an escaped slave, and that it's so thin that it looks and feels more like a tattoo. Which is to say that, having become part of the skin, one can hardly feel it at all since it moves with it so fluidly.

"Alright, I suppose I'll give you a quick tour. Come with me", you gesture. "C'mon, follow me", you say again, trying to get him to come with you.

You lead him into the kitchen, "This is the kitchen, this is where we make food. You know, food?" you say as you mime the act of eating as he gives you an annoyed stare.

"This is the living room, out there is the back-yard, and up the stairs here are more rooms", you pass by the open door to the bathroom and stop in the middle of the hall and open a door.

"This is my room. John's room", you say as you pat a hand on your chest. "John. John. John. My name is John. What's your name?" you say, pointing at him with an open hand.

You bob your head once, trying to elicit a response from him.

"Kařkat"

The 'r' sounds oddly trilled to your ears, and like there's a 'z' added after it. "Karzkat?" you repeat.

He shakes his head, "Kařřřkat", he enunciates.

"Karrrzh-kat?"

He shakes his head, visibly annoyed, "Kařkat"

You frown a bit, "Karkat?"

He lets out a defeated sigh and rolls his eyes, "Karkat", he repeats, closer to how you've said it.

"Right, pleased to meet you Karkat. I'm John. John."

"Čan", he says, not getting the first sound right.

"Um, not quite. JJJJohn", you say, enunciating the 'J'.

"ʃʃʃʃčhan", he says.

"No, _John_ ", you say clearly.

"Čan", he repeats again.

"Uh, sure, _Chon_ is close enough. I'm John, or Chon. Whichever is fine I guess, since I can't seem to get your name quite right either", you laugh, "This is my room. John's room."

Moving down the hall you pass by a closet and briefly open it up, "Uh, this is only a closet. Kinda boring, but they're pretty useful in keeping stuff organized."

You move to the end of the hall and open the door to his room. You've prepared it as well as you can. You've provided a pile of various cushions, pillows, and blankets since you know trolls prefer that to a bed.

"This is your room. Karkat's room. Karkat. Karkat", you say as you gesture widely with your arms.

You open up the closet in his room. "There're some clothes in here you can wear if you want, I don't know if you like them or not though. And, uh..." You reach into corner and pull out a pail. He turns his head away, clearly looking uncomfortable. His cheeks seem to be a slightly darker shade of grey, with a subtle crimson tint. It seems very obvious that he's blushing slightly.

"Yeah, I know what it's for. It's OK, I do it too. I figured you'd want to know it was there at least..." you say sheepishly, as you place it back in the corner, out of sight.

"Um, okay, lets continue", you say as you grab a change of clothes for him and move back into the hall. As you pass by a closed door, he stops, curiously staring at it. It's a door you haven't entered in a long time. You used to enter it quite frequently, but decided to stop one day.

He looks at you, "to pam ʃal?", he says while gesturing at the door.

"Oh", you say, gaze falling to the floor. "That's..." you aren't sure how to say it even in English. "Here, I'll show you", you say, willing yourself to open the door.

As you open it and even before you turn on the light, a wave of emotion washes over you as the familiar scent of the room reminds you of all the happy memories you had in here. The furniture in the room has been covered with white sheets and there's a somewhat thick layer of dust on everything else. The only thing exposed is a picture of you and your father at a birthday party of yours. It was the last birthday you ever shared with him, and its standing on top of the sheet-covered dresser next to the door.

Before you can speak, Karkat reaches out and picks up the photo. He studies it carefully, looking up at you and back at the photo several times. He points at the photo, "to Čan?" he says, sounding almost concerned. You recognize your name in what he said and nod.

"Yeah, this was my dad's room. _John_ ", you say pointing at the photo of you. He has a sad look on his face. You figure he understands why the room is in the state it's in.

He hands the photo back to you and you replace it. There are noticeable clean spots where your fingers had been touching it.

"taŋnatu", he says. It doesn't take someone fluent in Alternian to understand that he's apologizing.

"It's OK", you say, taking a step out. He exits the room and you turn off the light and close the door, but not before taking one last look at the room. Maybe you'll start spending some more time in here, you think to yourself. At the very least, you want to dust the room; you hadn't realized it'd been so many years.

You make your way down the hall and stop in front of the bathroom. 

"This is a bathroom, I assume you know what's for."

You step inside and turn on the faucet in the shower, "I figure you probably want to shower before we eat dinner."

"sareturlačar řuk to kaŋʃiličar", he says, in a very dry, sarcastic tone.

"Um, you can use any towel you want in here", you say as you open the small linen closet in the bathroom and pull out a towel. "You can put your dirty clothes in the hamper here", you say as you gesture towards it.

"korteŋʂetna", he spits out, shaking his head. He then shoos you out of the bathroom so you head downstairs to make some food.

You don't know what he likes, but you _do_ know that trolls have a faster metabolism than humans do, and need a higher proportion of protein than humans do, so you decide to make pork-chops with steamed veggies and diced sweet potatoes as sides. You also decide to whip up a batch of cookies for desert, since they're simple enough to make.

Your father's love of cooking has rubbed off on you, and you consider yourself to be pretty good at it, all things considered. Nobody has ever had a complaint at least. You get so lost between peeling sweet potatoes, making sure the pork-chops don't burn, and checking on the cookies, that you don't even hear Karkat come into the kitchen until you turn around and see him standing in the doorway.

"Oh, go ahead and sit down, it'll be ready soon", you say, turning back to the pork-chops, which have gotten dangerously close to getting singed.

You turn around again and see him still standing there.

"C'mon, sit!", you say, walking over to a chair and pulling it out while making a gesture to come over and do just that. He comes over and stands, folding his arms with a defiant look on his face. "Alright, stand if you want, I thought you'd be more comfortable sitting, that's all..." you say as you return to your cooking.

Eventually he does sit, and looks at you with a bit of a surprised look on his face as you begin to set the table. Finishing, you sit and start taking some food, and try to get him to do the same. Thin on patience from all the effort you've spent cooking, you just place a few pork-chops on his plate and scoop a helping of everything else on it too.

"Eat", you command matter-of-factly.

He starts eating, cautiously at first, but begins to inhale the food after a few bites.

"I _thought_ you'd be pretty hungry. I don't imagine they feed slaves very well"

"Mmmph", he grunts in response, with a full mouth.

He finishes his plate and still doesn't look quite satiated. The way he's looking back and forth at you and the last pork-chop is a dead giveaway.

"Go ahead and take it, I'm full", you say. Some more gesturing and he slowly reaches out with his fork. You nod, and he spears it, shortly finishing it off along with what's left of the veggies.

You stand and start washing the dishes, with him eyeing you sideways every time you come back for another plate. He sits tensely, and as you reach out for his plate, he grabs it before you do.

"ʃilera puťruʃona puťʂetlaekʃu, korteŋna!", he says, standing and angrily walking over to the sink.

You wonder if he feels some sort of pride about being taken care of. Now that you think about it, it almost looked like he expected you to make _him_ make the meal and do the cleaning when he first came in; it's certainly what anyone else would've had their troll do. You also think you remember a word in what he said that sounds familiar. He's certainly repeated it a few times.

You sigh as you leave the room and return with a pad of paper. You motion for him to sit down when he's done with his dishes, and then you start drawing. First you draw a stick figure of yourself, with glasses. "John", you say pointing at it with the pencil. Then you draw a stick figure of him, with horns and pointy teeth. "Karkat", you say, pointing at it now.

You then draw their hands holding the other's, circling both of them. "John and Karkat are friends", you say, "Friends", you repeat. 

He doesn't quite look like he gets it, so you draw another pair of stick figures, with him lying on the ground with your foot on his head. "No, not this", you say, putting a big 'X' through it, "Friends", you say as point back to the other drawing, circling it again.

He looks at you with an expression you can't quite place, "Understand?" you ask him.

He slowly nods his head.

"Good! How about some cookies then?" you say as you stand and bring the plate over to him.

He eyes them a bit longingly, obviously full, but takes one after you do and eats it. You can't help but notice that the rough edge he seemed to have before seems to have faded a bit, though to say that he was anything approaching "nice", would be an utter falsehood.

You both nibble on a few cookies before you talk again, "It won't be so bad here. I'll find some way to make you happy..."

You look up at him, and for the first time, you see genuine softness in his eyes. It's pretty clear that he doesn't understand your language, maybe a few words here and there, but you realize that the two of you aren't so different that the two of you can't understand each other's tone of voice or crude stick-figure drawings.

You notice his claws are long, but blunt. They'd obviously been clipped a long time ago so they would be less dangerous, like a goat having it's horns ground down before being placed in a petting zoo, but they'd long since grown out. It was a common practice among humans that owned trolls.

An idea hits you, "Wait here", you say to him. You return with a kit designed to clip and file the nails of trolls, they're a standard part of any good troll-owner's inventory. It has a set of heavy-duty nail-clippers, a rasp, and a rotary tool like the ones used in nail salons. Seeing the kit, he turns away with a disappointed look on his face.

"tiʂteu... korteŋnerolixatje", he says, dejectedly.

"Wait, it's not what you think, and was does 'kortinga' mean anyway?"

He seems more than a little surprised at hearing you use his language. "' _korteŋna_ '", he corrects.

"So what does it mean?", you say, as you unpack the tools and lay them out. You repeat, "'kortanga', What. Is. Kortanga?"

He laughs and points at your face, "kuttar korteŋneroli!"

"Me? Why do I get the feeling that that's not a compliment..."

Holding the rotary tool in one hand, you reach out the other, "C'mon, gimmie your hand"

"korteŋʂetna", he spits out bitterly, though still offering his hand.

"Yeah, definitely not a flattering term", you say as you start to work on one of his nails. "You know, I knew someone that had a cat once. It was a nice cat, it liked everyone, but it kept sharpening it's claws on things that were expensive. Instead of trying to do something more humane first, they had it declawed."

He keeps his head turned away from you for the most part, only occasionally turning back for a quick glance. It reminds you of what you do when you get your blood drawn.

"Hmph", you continue, "'Declawed', it sounds like such a nice word, but they cut the ends of their fingertips off. The whole knuckle. They didn't even try something else first, they just took it to a butcher. After that, it wasn't as nice as it used to be. I mean, it was nice to me, even though it was kinda mean to me at first after it came back, but I think it was so mean because it was scared that it couldn't defend itself. Most other people it would just hiss at and run from, or try and bite or claw them, even though they were just nubs at that point."

"There", you say, having finished. "What do you think?"

He looks down at his newly sharpened nail in disbelief. He pokes the end of it with his thumb a few times and looks back up at you.

"Maybe you'll have a more cheerful disposition if you feel like you can defend yourself if you need to."

He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it. If you didn't know better, you'd say he was at a loss for words.

You giggle, "Alright, I think you can do the rest", you say, putting the rotary tool in his hand and pushing the rest of the tools over to him. "I'm going to take a shower, try not to burr a hole in the table."

You feel the shocked look of his gaze burning at the back of your neck as you beat a hasty retreat before he can say anything, smiling as you walk up the stairs.

You shower quickly, and return to find him sporting a set of quite dangerous looking claws, even though they're slightly shorter than they were before.

"Nice! Hey, can I feel them?" you say, cautiously holding out a hand. He rolls his eyes but extends his hand. You gently feel them, they're quite sharp. They really do seem like they could quite literally rip through and shred your flesh and leave scars on your bones. You gently tap on the points of a few fingers, and he pulls his hand away.

"xuh! talulorankasuʂetleekʃuhalni", he says as he pulls his hand away.

"Alright, why don't we watch a movie now?" you say as you walk over to the TV and begin rifling through the movies you have. You get the feeling that he wouldn't appreciate a Nic Cage movie as well as you would, and he seems wound-up enough, so you decide on a nature documentary; one about the big cats of the world. It was given to you as a gift by a relative you hardly ever see, and it's unsurprisingly still in the original shrink-wrap.

You put it in and press 'play' and motion for him to sit down on the couch. He hesitantly walks over as you continue to beckon, and sits. He seems a bit uncertain of what's being asked of him, so you sit back and focus on the TV. He seems disinterested at first, looking around the room more than at the TV, but eventually settles in and watches with you. You occasionally steal a glance at him every now and then, wanting to make sure he's OK.

You can't help but notice again how attractive he is, but it feels wrong to try and hit on him. Not because he's a troll and anyone else would think of it as being as repulsive as being attracted to a goat, but because he's so helpless here. Ultimately, at some level, he knows that he wouldn't be accepted anywhere else and would be put to death for being more trouble than he's worth. Knowing that, you know he would feel compelled to go along with anything you did.

You notice him shiver a bit, so you pull the blanket off the back of the couch and hand it to him. "Here", you say.

He looks back and forth at you and the blanket a few times before you unfold it a bit and half-throw, half-lay it over him. He gives you a look you can't quite place, and mutters something under his breath.

"You're welcome", you say.

He simply shakes his head and focuses back on the movie.

He goes back and forth from groaning in boredom, to focusing intently on the screen. You realise that without being able to understand the narration, it's probably not quite as interesting, although being a documentary in and of itself is already boring enough, though he seems to at least be interested more than you thought.

It ends and you turn the TV off. You notice that he has the blanket pulled tightly over himself. He seems to be fighting back the urge to shiver. You wonder for a moment, considering that the house isn't that cold, before remembering that their higher metabolism would result in a higher body temperature, as well as the fact that their planet is barely habitable even to _them_ during the daytime. Of course he would feel so cold at only about 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Here", you say, walking over to the fireplace. You begin to crumple up some newspaper sheets, placing the balls in the fireplace. You then place a large log on top of it and, striking a match, proceed to light the newspapers in several places.

You throw the match into the fireplace and look over your shoulder to see him watching curiously. "C'mon, come over here", you say, gesturing to him as you scoot back a bit as the fire starts to pick up. It doesn't take much cajoling to get him to come over. He sits next to you and sighs, visibly tired.

It feels a bit strange to have him sitting so close to you. You want to say something; want to reassure him, but with the language barrier you know the important parts won't connect, so you sit in silence instead.

The fire starts to pick up and he seems entranced by it for a moment, before moving right up against it. You wonder how he doesn't burn, but either his tough skin, or his natural physiology keeps him safe. You continue to sit and watch him from a comfortable distance after trying to approach the fire to the same degree he has. It wasn't something you were able to stand for more than a few seconds.

Time passes, and he takes a deep breath and scoots back to where he was.  
The fire, having already reached its zenith, has begun to subside. He looks at you for a moment, and you turn to meet his gaze.

"I- I know this isn't what you expected, or wanted in life..." language barrier be damned, you can't just sit here like this. Besides, you get the feeling that he understands a few words of English at least, to say nothing of how well tone of voice seems to carry between your languages. "But I'll find some way... some way you can be happy here." You pick up his hand and hold it in yours. He briefly looks down as you pick it up, but he doesn't resist, and actually returns your gentle squeeze. "Some way..." you repeat. "I'll find some way..."

Throwing everything else to the wind, you release his hand and move your arm around his shoulders. He tenses up for a moment, and you expect an angry response, but he lets out his breath and relaxes into your embrace. You sit there for a while, your arm around his shoulder, his head on yours, until the last few flames flicker out, leaving only glowing embers remaining.

"Mmm, c'mon", you say softly, removing your arm from his shoulder. "Time to go to bed." He starts a bit, and you realize that he must've already fallen asleep. "Time to go to bed", you repeat again, softly.

You reach forward and close the glass doors to the fireplace as he stretches. You hold out your hand to help him stand, and he eyes you suspiciously, but takes it and stands. You release it, and walk over to the base of the stairs. 

"C'mon." It doesn't take a lot of encouraging for him to follow you upstairs. You enter your room and turn to wave at him. "Good night!" you say.

He stops and turns. "lee?" It seems fairly obvious that must be his word for "Huh?", so you repeat yourself. "Good night!"

"kuut nait", he says. You beam with a smile at his attempt to use your language. "Thank you! Good night!" you say again, and wave at him as you slowly close your door, leaving it open a crack.

You hear him go into his room and close the door as you dress down to your underwear and climb into bed. It's been a long day and you feel really tired. So many thoughts race through your head that it's hard to keep track of them all, but the main one you notice over and over again is how much of a responsibility you've undertaken. You're going to be responsible for him. Not only his basic needs, but his happiness as well, and you can't even communicate more than the most basic of things.

You decide to try to teach him your language, since communication is going to be a key to being able to really provide for him. You wonder why he doesn't speak any English. Usually that's part of the curriculum at the academies where they're trained. If a Troll doesn't speak English, they can't be a house-slave, and they would barely be able to do brutal manual labor if they couldn't understand what they were being told to do. He doesn't seem like the kind to be suited to that anyway. The only thing you can figure is that his incredible stubbornness and pride kept him from learning it somehow, which almost got him killed.

Feeling tired at having done so much in a day, you close your eyes and try to rest, sleep overtaking you before you realize it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what do you think of proto-Alternian so far? Are there any other conlangers on AO3 that can/want to give any feedback on the conlang itself? I'm organizing my notes into something more like a textbook and reference grammar, which I hope to post up somewhere eventually. I'd also be happy to hear from general readers what you thought of the fic and/or proto-Alternian. ^_^ This was also the first fic I've written in second-person POV, which was not something I've done before so it took a bit of getting used to the new style, but it was fun!
> 
> ~ 'the fuck you think you're doing you round-toothed bulge-muncher!~  
> INTR fuck what.WH do-2SG/3SG-PROG roundtooth-ADJ bulge_eat-REL 2SG-ERG  
> "to six pam puťlinčař korteŋna xramhexpel kut!"
> 
> ~If you weren't such a fucking loser, I would've killed you and escaped already...~  
> loser-AUG-ADJ roundtooth-PM.COPULA.NSENT-3SG-NEG-PFV-COND kill-1SG/2SG-PFV SUC escape-PFV-REC  
> "keťʂetna korteŋnerolitarhalnixatjeʂa, ʃuxlarxatje ťle huřetxatjelara" 
> 
> ~roundtooth~  
> "korteŋna"
> 
> ~what's this?~  
> INTR what this.DEM  
> "to pam ʃal?"
> 
> ~sorry~  
> "taŋnatu"
> 
> ~Do you think I smell? (lit. '"I smell", are you thinking?'~  
> stink-1SG-CONT QUOT INTR think-2SG-CONT  
> "sareturlačar řuk to kaŋʃiličar"
> 
> ~fucking round-tooth~  
> round_tooth-AUG-ADJ  
> "korteŋʂetna"
> 
> ~I'm fully capable of doing that myself, roundtooth!~  
> that.DEM-GEN to_do-NZ-ACC to_do-AUG-1SG-POT round_tooth-ADJ  
> "ʃilera puťruʃona puťʂetlaekʃu, korteŋna!"
> 
> ~I knew you were a round-tooth~  
> reality-INE round_tooth-PM.COPULA.NSENT-2SG-PFV  
> "tiʂteu... korteŋnerolixatje"
> 
> ~you're a kortengna~  
> you-SU.COPULA.NSENT round_tooth-PM.COPULA.NSENT-1SG  
> "kuttar korteŋneroli!" 
> 
> ~enough, it can't be that interesting~  
> enough.ADV interest-AUG-3SG-POT-NEG  
> "xuh! talulorankasuʂetleekʃuhalni"


	2. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter. The "Graphic depictions of violence" probably applies to this chapter, but it's done in more of a medical context, if that makes a difference to anybodies' squick-factor. Interlinear gloss and translations provided at the end.
> 
> I have to say, using the Homestuck skin here certainly makes for nicer looking chatlogs! ^_^

You wake a few times during the night, thinking you've heard a strange noise coming from down the hall, but go back to sleep after waiting, hearing nothing further. It's not uncommon for the neighborhood cats to howl at each other once and run off.

Later on, you wake again and look at the clock. It's 6:30, about 30 minutes before your alarm is set to go off. You decide to get out of bed and get an early start. Today is a day you're going to school. After your father's death, it was too difficult to continue going to school at the time, so it was arranged for you to do a home-study program. You'd be assigned a week's worth of reading and homework at a time, and only have to show up once a week to turn it in and fetch the next week's homework and take the occasional test. It was so much better than having to go every day, you decided to stick with it since who wants to go to school every day if you can get all the work done at home in half the time, and today is a test day, so an early start it is.

You get on your computer and notice that Dave's on. It's been a few months since you've spoken. You sort of had a falling out when you decided you were going to get a troll. Dave had insisted that it was wrong to own a living being as property, you put forth that people owned pets, he countered by saying that people don't work their pets as slaves, you countered that horses and oxen pull plows, and then things got ugly. You haven't spoken since then, but now you realize he was right. You only saw the happy trolls on TV and never saw what the reality of the situation was until now.

EB: hi dave, I bought a troll but I wanted to say you were right  
EB: I saw what they did to them and wasn't gonna buy one but they were gonna kill him  
EB: I couldn't let that happen so he's here now, but you were right  
EB: are we still friends?  
TG: dude you were the one who stopped talking to me  
TG: you know we're always gonna be bros   
TG: unless you do something too stupid even for you   
TG: but i don't think you're smart enough to do that   
EB: umm, thanks I guess  
TG: you're welcome   
TG: so how does it feel to be a slaveowner, i mean benevolent slaveowner   
EB: I told you it's not like that!   
TG: whatever, i knew you wouldn't be able to do it anyway   
EB: do what?   
TG: be a slaveowner, knew you'd chicken out, but never thought you go the wounded kitten/stray puppy route with one   
TG: youre too kind to own a slave anyway   
TG: thats what i was trying to tell you   
EB: he's not a pet! his name is Karkat, or something like that. he doesn't speak any english   
TG: wait what? how do you communicate then?  
EB: we don't really   
TG: well that must be fun, you should talk to rose   
EB: why? she hasn't been on lately   
TG: just talk to her, tell her what you told me   
EB: umm, ok, i guess   
TG: so what's he like?   
EB: umm, cute   
EB: like, REALLY cute   
TG: ...   
TG: john, you DO know better than to hit on someone that can't say no to you right?   
TG: i mean, thats like barely a step above spiking someones drink at some cheap dive   
TG: an unironic dive, not the kind that's a dive but knows its a dive and doesn't care. one with a craptastic dj spinning terrible songs and even worse lines   
TG: with a seedy bartender that waters the drinks   
TG: with a phone number scrawled on a stall in the restroom above a glory hole  
TG: do i need to go on?   
EB: no, I get the idea   
EB: and I wasn't gonna hit on him, he's too...   
TG: too what?   
EB: I dunno, it's like he's emotionally damaged or something   
TG: you mean like from being a slave? what a fucking surprise!   
EB: he's not a slave anymore! I don't make him do anything!   
EB: but yeah, probably   
EB: I gotta go cook breakfast for us now, talk to you later?   
TG: sure but   
EB: but?   
TG: if you wimp out on me again and stop talking to me in a whiny emo fit of misplaced self loathing im so totally gonna kick your ass so hard so that some of my coolness is bound to rub off on you  
EB: You almost sound like Rose with that psychobabble 8)   
TG: i don't know if that's a compliment or an insult   
EB: talk to you later! 

With that, you sign off and get dressed. You walk down to Karkat's room and knock on the door. "Karkat? I'm gonna make breakfast now. You wanna come down?"

You hear an indistinct noise coming from the room.

"Uh, Karkat?", you say as you knock again. You've decided that you're not going to enter his room uninvited. He really needs a space that's his; a space he can go to when he wants to feel safe. It's important that it remain inviolate.

"Karkat? You okay?" You say as you knock again.

You startle as a dull "whump" whacks against the door, probably a thrown pillow, followed by very clear cursing. You notice that cursing clearly transcends language, whichever one it may be.

You decide to go downstairs and start breakfast. You get so engrossed in cooking that you don't even hear Karkat get up until he walks into the kitchen. His hair is wet and he's clearly showered. Rubbing his eyes, he sits on a chair. He seems to be a bit less irritated than he was yesterday. You hope he's settling in.

You don't bother with a spread like you did with dinner, and just fix a plate for him. Sausage, bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, you want to make sure he's fed well. He stares at the plate for a moment and then dives right in. It's nice to know that he has an appetite.

You eat quickly, knowing you'll need to leave soon if you want to get to school on time. You stand to go and gather your things into your backpack and realize that Karkat is going to need to eat lunch too, which you won't be around to prepare. Not sure if he'd find something to eat on his own, you head back into the kitchen and start preparing two sandwiches for him as he gets up and starts washing the dishes.

"Thank you", you say.

An annoyed grunt is the only response he gives.

"I'm going to be leaving for a while today, so these are for you", you say after you finish. "These. For. Karkat. Eat. Later", you say miming the actions of the words as best you can as he gives you a blank stare. "Karkat. Eat. OK", you say again, and he nods hesitantly.

Putting them in the fridge, you pick up a sketchbook and draw simple figures to illustrate what you're about to do. "I'm going out. John is going outside. Karkat stays here. John will come back at one o'clock", you say, drawing a clock with the hands at said time. "Karkat eat sandwiches", you say again, drawing a picture as best you can.

He nods more vigorously, and seems to understand well this time. So you bid him farewell and don your backpack and helmet. As you open the front door, you notice him looking at you curiously.

"Remember. John go. Karkat stay", you repeat, pointing away for _go_ and to the ground for _stay_.

"korteŋna" he says as he rolls his eyes, and then points to the collar that's been molecularly fused to his neck.

"Right. Um, see you later then!" you say as you head out and get on your bike. It looks like you might be able to beat the imminent looking rain if you hurry so you pedal as fast as you can and make it to school in record time.

You take the test, turn in your homework, and pick up next week's assignment. Another boring day at school. You wonder how people could fail these tests, they're so easy. Oh well, at least you're done until next week.

The rain is only light by the time you leave, and your pedaling generates enough internal body heat that being wet doesn't really bother you. Normally you'd wear a poncho to help stay dry, but sometimes you just like getting wet.

You take a detour and stop in at a bookstore. You buy a few pads of paper, and spend some time looking for some good books to help teach Karkat English. You find a children's picture book which shows a variety of common objects and has their names written next to them, as well as a few short stories also meant for children and purchase them. Placing them into your waterproof panniers, you then head to the grocery store before heading home and buy a few things since you're already out and are nearly soaking wet so it doesn't matter if you hurry or not at this point.

Arriving home. you insert your key and find Karkat lying on the couch. He sits up with a bit of a jolt, looking up at you with a worried look on his face that fades quickly as you step in.

"It's just me, don't worry. Nobody else lives here but you and me."

tolkupenlarþominixta sux korteŋtakt, taluloranpanlihalni, he says, not exactly thrilled to see you.

"Well, it's good to see you too", you respond sarcastically.

You put the groceries away before heading upstairs and changing out of your wet clothes, which you throw in the dryer and turn on. One thing you've learned the hard way, is that wet clothes and high humidity means mold or mildew growing; not something you want to have happen again.

You come downstairs and retrieve your newly purchased books. Sitting next to Karkat, you open the picture book to a page that has common kitchen items, figuring that starting with household items would be best.

"Here, time for an English lesson", you say.

He sees the books and explodes with rage.

"ḱalolaʂet́ʂet́! taluloranpanlartaerahalni þokana rikarloranna kupenťularatona!", he shouts rage burning in his eyes.

"Uh, it's OK. I'll help you. Here, see this one? 'Knife'. Can you say 'knife'?"

He stares at you as if in total disbelief.

"Knife, fork, spoon", you say, pointing to each one.

He gently takes the book out of your hands, closes it, then flings it across the room.

"Hey! What was that for!?" You say as you stand to go retrieve it.

"taluloranpanlartaerahalni þokana kupenťularatona řuk kupenlara!" He shouts at you.

"Well I don't care if you want to or not, sit down!"

"korteŋna!" He shouts.

"Kortenga!" You repeat back to him, pointing at his face.

He chortles at your use of language.

"What's so funny?"

"ʃil kupennaloera talumioraona taluloranpanlihalni", he says, laughing in way showing that he's clearly amused with your use of that word.

"Alright, I guess that must be a bad word for humans then, if it's so funny to hear me say it to you. Fine, sit down", you say after bending over to retrieve the book.

He remains standing and simply folds his arms in defiance.

"Dammit just sit down!" You repeat, sitting next to him.

He doesn't move.

Standing up again to meet him, you lock eyes with him for a moment, before clamping your hands on his shoulders. It surprises him, and he unfolds his arms as he looks back and forth between your hands. His eyes have a bit of fear in them.

You gently start to push him down but he resists. You increase your efforts. You're not trying to force him down so much as make it clear that you want him to sit and you want him to sit **NOW**.

Despite his superior strength, he's not fighting back much. Probably because he doesn't really need to. You relent and release your grip, sighing. You rub your forehead in frustration and take a step back so you're not still in his face, and pick up the book again.

"Don't you want to communicate with me?"

He stares at you for a moment, before picking up the remainder of the books on the coffee table, holding them out at arm's length in front of himself, and summarily dropping them on the floor.

"What's your problem!" You shout in frustration as you bend down to pick them up. He then places his foot on one of the books you've just reached for.

You grunt in frustration as you try to either push his foot to the side, or pull the book out from under it, but manage to move neither.

"Dammit! Just let me pick them up! I don't care anymore! Stay ignorant if you want!"

When he still doesn't move you stand again and see a myriad of mixed emotions in his eyes that you don't have time to analyse before he says "korteŋna" again. The way he says it though, is with pure hatred and loathing for you; unlike any of the times he's said it before. The venom with which it's said, impacts you in way that cuts right to your core.

"Just **GET OFF MY BOOKS**!" You shout as you give him a hard shove.

He hisses and his eyes narrow. You step back in startled disbelief as you can tell from the look in his eyes he's about to attack you now. You raise a hand defensively as you step back, but it's too late. You feel an impact on your arm and shout out, more from surprise than pain. You stumble back, cradling your arm protectively as you fall on your backside. You turn over, onto your knees, still cradling your arm and realize there's already a small pool of blood on the ground beneath you.

You stare at it in disbelief for a moment, before realizing it's coming from your left arm, still oozing through the fingers of your right. "Chan!" You hear Karkat say as he shakes your shoulder. You realize he's tried to get your attention a few times already, but it had seemed so distant, you didn't notice it before.

You look up at him and he looks scared. _Very_ scared. He says something to you in his language that you don't understand and you look down at your arm again. It doesn't even really hurt. You wonder how it could be bleeding so profusely. You hear Karkat dash away and return with a phone. He offers it to you but you don't understand what he wants.

He dials a number and holds it up against your face.

"911. Police, Fire, or Ambulance?" a female voice asks.

"Umm, I cut myself and it's bleeding a lot", you respond without thinking much about it.

"You say you've been cut and you're bleeding? How bad is the bleeding?"

"I don't know. There's a lot of blood, but it doesn't really hurt, so I don't know."

"Alright we'll send someone out to look at it. Where do you live?"

"In a house."

"I mean, what is your address?"

"I, uh, can't think of it right now", you half mumble out.

"Alright, don't panic, we have 21605 Fir Drive in Maple Valley showing up on our screen. Does that sound right?"

"Yes. I'm downstairs."

"Alright, stay on the line and-" at this point Karkat sets the receiver down next to you so you don't hear the rest of it.  
He moves around to your left arm. It's been wounded just below the elbow, and he squeezes the part near your shoulder tightly.  
It kind of hurts, but you don't stop him.

You hear him mutter something in his alien tongue and he lets go of your arm causing a gush of blood to come out. You watch, dazed, as he removes his shirt and rips a long piece of cloth from it and ties it tightly around your upper arm.

It hurts. You remove your hand from your arm and start picking at it to loosen it up, but he swats away your hand. You don't really understand what's going on. It can't be that bad of a cut if your arm doesn't hurt, but this armband around it _does_ hurt and you want it off.

He shouts something at you again as you feel a wave of dizziness come over you. You close your eyes and barely feel him catch you as you start to lean to one side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> korteŋna  
> round_tooth.ADJ 
> 
> ~I'd insult you, but you're a roundtooth and wouldn't understand it anyway~  
> insult-1SG/2SG-INTEN-IPFV but round_tooth-GRND understand-2SP-NEG  
> tolkupenlarþominixta sux korteŋtakt, taluloranpanlihalni 
> 
> ~No fucking way! I am _not_ learning your shitty, primitive language!~  
>  refuse-1SG-AUG-AUG learn-1SP/2PL-GEN-NEG shitty-ADJ primitive-ADJ language-ACC  
> ḱalolaʂet́ʂet́!　　taluloranpanlartaerahalni þokana rikarloranna kupenťularatona! 
> 
> ~I said I'm not learning your shitty language!~  
> learn.1SP/2PL-GEN-NEG shitty-ADJ language-ACC QUOT say-REC  
> "taluloranpanlartaerahalni þokana kupenťularatona řuk kupenlara!" 
> 
> ~You don't know what that word means~  
> that.DEM word-GEN idea-ACC understand-2SP-NEG  
> "ʃil kupennaloera talumioraona taluloranpanlihalni"


	3. Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wheeee! I say I'll try to update soon, then get so swamped with schoolwork that I barely have time to eat! Anyway, hopefully this chapter was worth the wait ^_^

You fade in and out of consciousness a few times. You mostly come to when you hear a deep male voice talking to you. You recognize that he's a paramedic and he's standing in your living room, along with a few other EMTs. He asks you a few questions, like your name, what year it is, how many fingers he's holding up, etc. which you answer as best you can.

They help you onto a stretcher and tell you they're going to take you to the ER to get your arm treated, and that you'll be OK. You feel better, but on the ride to the ER they put an IV in and when they do, you look down and see your bloody arm again and feel faint.

You come to again in a room filled with bright lights when another man calls your name. He tells you he's a doctor and he's going to suture the wounds in your arm.

"So what happened?" he asks you.

"I fell", you respond, still a bit out of it and thinking more of what happened afterwards. Right now your butt is more sore from falling on the ground and your arm is mostly numb, though it's throbbing faintly.

"Alright, well, let me get you all fixed up then. I'm going to have to give you some shots to numb you, which will probably hurt a little bit, but after that you won't feel anything", he says.

You nod your head and he grabs a syringe off a tray that has various other instruments on it. Sutures, bandages, scissors, nothing particularly scary looking. You watch as he uncaps the syringe and turn away when he gives the first injection. He gives a few more, then a few more, before finally telling you this part is over and that he'll be back in 10 minutes when the drug takes effect.

You feel your arm gradually start to go more and more numb than it already is, and the doctor returns with a nurse. She smiles at you and they begin to suture your arm up. The doctor is very professional looking, albeit a bit young-looking for a doctor. Probably in his early to mid-30s or so.

The nurse tries to make small talk with you but you're not feeling very talkative at the moment. You space out and before you know it, the doctor is telling you that he's all finished. He says he's going to remove the tourniquet. It's only then that you realize that he's talking about the ripped piece of Karkat's shirt that's still wrapped tightly around your upper arm.

He explains that it probably saved your life, and that you should thank your friend for being so quick thinking. He tells you that you might have bled to death since the wound cut an arteriole, but tells you not to worry, that he's sutured it closed.

He slowly cuts the fabric while keeping an eye on your arm. It comes off, and he watches your arm intently, gently prodding it a few times. You hadn't noticed that most of the color had left it until you feel warmth slowly filling your arm and the pale color giving way to a more ordinary looking pinkish hue.

"I think everything is OK. I want you to stay here and rest for a bit so we can keep an eye on you, but if everything's fine, you can go home tonight."

You nod.

With that he puts a gauze pad over the now closed wounds and tapes it down before asking, "Do you have a phone number so I can call you parents?"

Your eyes fall. "I live alone. I've been emancipated."

"I see. Is there anyone I should contact?"

You shake your head. "Maybe my dad's friend, but he lives in Seattle now, so he can't help much since he's so far away."

The nurse speaks up, "Isn't there anyone? A neighbor? A relative? You're going to need a little help since you won't be able to use that arm for a few weeks."

"No, I'll be OK. I can take care of myself", you say, feeling a bit lethargic. "Why did I pass out so many times? Did I lose a lot of blood? I still feel tired now."

"You did lose some blood, but it's nothing to worry about. You don't need a transfusion or anything. You probably passed out more from shock than anything. There's nothing to worry about. Lots of people do that when they injure themselves. But I want you to take it easy for the next few days. Be careful climbing stairs, don't exercise, don't ride a bike, those sorts of things. You might be a little woozy until your body replaces the blood you lost, but this really isn't much more serious than when people go in to donate a pint of it. You just need to take it easy for a while."

"How long will that take?"

"Just a few days", the doctor reassures you, "You'll probably feel better by tomorrow, but I want you to still take it easy for a few days even if you think you feel OK, understand?"

You nod.

He then looks up uncomfortably at the nurse and you know something bad is coming. "About your wound. Can you tell me what happened again?"

"I..." you can already see where this is going, "I dropped a knife while I was cooking and when reached out to try and grab it in mid-air before it fell, I accidentally cut myself." As soon as you say it, you realize how utterly ridiculous it sounds, but it's the best you could do considering you don't have Dave's quick wit.

The doctor sighs and looks up at the nurse, who looks at you, then looks away uncomfortably.

"John, I can tell that these wounds were caused by an attack. They even grazed the bone. The only thing that could've done that is a troll, and I have an ethical and legal obligation to make a report if a minor is in danger."

Your lip starts to quiver and you start crying. You know what's going to happen to Karkat if you can't make up a plausible sounding story. "Please! It was an accident! He didn't mean it! I just got him yesterday. I slipped and fell and he tried to grab me but he missed. I sharpened his claws because I thought it would make him feel better and he didn't know better!" you plead with him. "Please! He's not dangerous! It was my fault. He's the one that called 911. He's the one that put the tourniquet on my arm. You said it saved my life didn't you? Why would he do that if he wanted to hurt me? Please! It's OK! He's not dangerous!"

The doctor pauses for a moment as the nurse hands you a tissue. You blow your nose and you can tell he's deep in thought. After what seems like an eternity, he speaks again.

"Alright, I don't think there's any danger here, but you should know better than to sharpen a troll's claws. They're not used to having them that way, so you should probably have them filed down again."

You nod your head acknowledging you heard him, hoping he'll mistake it for agreement with him. Even if you wanted to, you doubt Karkat would actually let you file his claws down without a monumental struggle.

The doctor leaves with the nurse, then comes back later to check on you.

"How are you?"

"My arm's starting to hurt", you say. "It didn't hurt before, why is it hurting now?"

"It's pretty common for that to happen. Don't worry about it. At first it was probably the shock of it and the tourniquet, and now that they've been removed the anesthetic is probably starting to wear off now. I'll give you some pain medication to take home with you. I can bring you something now if you'd like."

You nod your head.

He leaves and returns with a pill. "I'm going to give you a bottle of these to take home with you, but it's very important you take them as directed. Take one every four hours to keep the pain away. You can take up to three at one time if it gets really bad, but you can't take more than three at a time or more than eight in a day, or it could cause serious liver damage. Understand?"

"No more than three at once, no more than eight a day", you repeat.

"Alright, try just one at first, and see what that does. If it still hurts in an hour, you can take another one then. They're going to make you feel really sleepy, so you should be careful while you're taking them."

You nod and swallow the pill with the small cup of water he provides. He comes back to check on you a few more times but they become less and less frequent. You get up to go to the bathroom and ask a passing nurse if you can go home soon, since you're getting bored. She says she'll send the doctor over to look at you again.

You sit on the edge of the bed, rather than lie down as you wait for him. When he arrives, he asks how your arm feels and you say it still hurts, but it's getting better. He examines it again and says you can go home, but he's going to print out some care instructions for you to do.

He comes back with some papers and goes over them with you. "Most of this is pretty straight forward. You're too young to drive, but you shouldn't ride a bike while you're on this medication. You should also be careful when showering. Sometimes the warm water can cause blood pressure to drop enough for people to feel a bit faint. No jacuzzis, no hot tubs, and no saunas either. Change the dressing twice a day, in the morning and at night. I'll give you some gauze pads to take home."

He continues, "I already explained how to use the medicine I provided" he says as he hands you a bottle of pills. "I'm also going to give you a sling to put your arm in for the next week. I want you to rest it and not use it for today, but I want you to use it as much as it feels comfortable after that. If you keep even a healthy arm in a sling, it'll get weak, so the sling is more to remind you to be careful with it than to not use it, OK?"

You nod.

"Alright, I'll call a cab to take you home. It should be here in a few minutes."

You still feel a bit dazed, or maybe the pill you took is starting to kick in more. A nurse comes in and hands you a voucher for the cab ride, as well as a bag containing several dozen gauze pads and two rolls of surgical tape. She tells you to just give the voucher to the driver when you get to your destination and you won't need to pay anything more. You climb into the cab when it arrives and drift off into thought.

You start to get nervous at the thought of what set Karkat off earlier. People just _knew_ that trolls were inherently violent, but they were supposed to be broken of that before they were put up for sale.

You pause as you think to yourself, ' _Broken?_ ' You've heard of some groups make some pretty outrageous claims about how trolls are treated, but they're just terrorists. They set fire to training grounds and academies for trolls, and kidnap and steal trolls ostensibly to set them free or smuggle them back to Alternia. Some people even claim they've staged assassinations of high-ranking importers of trolls or other people running training grounds. They couldn't possibly be right, could they? This whole system was meant to help out trolls, right?

You don't even notice that the cab driver pulls into your driveway until he speaks up. "Here we are. That'll be $18.75."

You hand him the voucher, and a few extra dollars on top of it as a tip. He smiles and thanks you. You think maybe he recognizes you, since you've ridden with him several times before, even though you usually bike to where you want to go if it's in town.

You step out and hurry to the front porch through the rain. You unlock the door, but before turning the knob, a wave of fear washes over you. ' _What if Karkat attacks me again?_ ' you think to yourself.

You pause at the door, wondering what you should do and how to handle the situation, when the doorknob rattles and it opens from the inside. Karkat is standing in front of you. His face has some red streaks on it that you think are blood, before seeing his puffy eyes and remembering that trolls' tears are the same color as their blood. He looks utterly terrified of you and leans to the side a bit to see if anyone else is with you. His lip quivers a bit before he speaks.

"Sah-ree", he says in a way that you realize is an attempt at speaking English.

You step forward into the house and he moves over to the side. You stand there for a moment, and he repeats himself.

"I- Karkat... sah-ree. Bat hurt?"

"Huh?"

He gets a mildly frustrated look on his face as he searches for words, but ends up repeating himself. "Bat hurt?"

"Bat? Like with wings?" you say, trying to flap your arms even though one of them is in a sling. "Or like a baseball bat?" trying to mime swinging at a ball.

He shakes his head vigorously. "No. Bat hurt." He points to your arm. "Not kuut. Bat hurt."

You process the information for a moment. "Oh!" you say, finally getting it. "No, it's not hurt bad. I'll be OK."

"S-sah-ree. Karkat bat. Not Chan hurt akin." You realize he's acknowledging he's done something wrong and promising not to hurt you again. Moreover, he's actually trying to speak English. You didn't think he understood much at all before, but he's clearly able to understand and use a few words at least.

"It's OK. You actually saved me. Remember the tourniquet you put on my arm?" You point to your upper arm and mime the act of wrapping something around that. "Bandage here, John live. No bandage here, John die. Understand?"

He nods his head after a moment, "Not do", he says, pointing at his own upper arm, "Chan tie", his face contorting as if in pain. "Wait", he says.

He walks into the kitchen and you happen to notice that the floor in the living room has been cleaned. There's no trace of your blood anymore. At least you won't have to clean that up yourself. He returns a moment later holding something you can't quite see at first. You then realize he's holding a large butcher-knife. You tense up in fear and take a step back and he freezes, holding out a hand as if to calm you.

He slowly kneels down and slides the knife across the wooden floor so it clatters to a stop in front of you. He then slowly inches towards you, holding his arm out in front of himself in offering.

"Do" he says.

"What?" you say incredulously.

"Do!", he repeats, inching forward on his knees.

"No way!"

" **Do**!" he insists.

You reach down and pick up the knife. He closes his eyes and clenches his face, only to let out a startled jump when you toss it back on the ground.

"I am not cutting you! Go put that back!" You command him, pointing at the kitchen.

He looks back and forth between you and the knife. You slide it in his direction with your foot. "Put it back in the kitchen! I am not cutting you! John. Not. Hurt. Karkat!" you enunciate.

He slowly picks up the knife and returns it to the kitchen. You really don't want to deal with this right now. It's bad enough he seems to be as defiant as he is, but now he seems to have a desire for self-mutilation, instrumented by yourself.

You hastily climb the stairs to go to your room and your head starts spinning. In a flash, Karkat's behind you and has a firm arm wrapped around you . You take a few deep breaths, remembering your doctor's warning about taking it easy.

"Thanks", you say after you feel the blood come back to your head and feel oriented again. It was more like standing up too fast and getting light headed but it would've been _really_ bad if you'd fallen down even a few steps, to say nothing if you'd made it most of the way up and fainted.

He nods his head and you continue your climb up the stairs, a bit slower and with Karkat only a step or two behind you. You head into your room and sit on your bed. Karkat remains in the doorway, looking unsure about whether he has permission to enter or not. Finally, he takes a few steps in and when you don't complain, he walks over to you and sits on the floor in front of you. It feels a little weird to have him sit in front of you in what's obviously a submissive way.

"Don't sit like that. Sit in my computer chair or something. It's weird seeing you sit like that."

He looks uncomfortable. Like he understands enough of what you said to know he's done something wrong, but not enough to know exactly _what_ it is he's done wrong or why.

"Here, sit here", you say, motioning him up and pointing to the spot next to you on the bed, scooting over a bit.

He stands cautiously, and you continue to gesture for him to sit. Finally, he does.

He opens his mouth to say something, but struggles for the words. He gives a few false starts before he sighs in frustration. "to t́apanruʃtar nixainerole?" he says. He's obviously asking a question.

"to t́apanruʃtar nixainerole?" he repeats himself. "t́apan OK?" he hesitates for a moment. "Okay?" he says, pointing to his eye then gently touching the shoulder of your injured arm, then tapping on his own.

"Uh, sure OK. I wanna take a shower anyway, and this is starting to itch", you say as you remove your arm from the sling and pull the tape off the dressing revealing three rather deep wounds, and a fourth that's a bit shallower, probably from his little finger.

He stares at it intently for a moment before cautiously reaching a hand out. He pauses almost as if he hit a barrier when he gets close and looks up at you. You just stare into each other's eyes for a moment before he breaks his gaze and gently cups his hand under your arm, being _very_ careful to go slow and avoid any spots that might be sore.

He slowly lifts it up closer to his face before sniffing it a few times, causing you to giggle in response. He gives you a strange look but you just smile in response.

He cups your hand for a moment and, ever so slowly, curls your fingers into a fist then flexes your wrist a few times, all the while intently staring at you as if to gauge your response.

"Good. Not... laaa... um, not...", he pauses for a moment. "Can move. Move good. Not hurt. Not, laaa... cat? No. Cut? Not cut? Can move?" You notice that he seems to struggle a bit with some of the phonemes in the words, as if it takes him conscious effort to produce them. He also motions with his finger laterally down his arm as he speaks.

"You mean the tendons? Yeah, it was just the muscle. The tendons weren't cut. I'll be fine", you try to reassure him.

He swallows uncomfortably, you sit there for a moment before speaking. "Can I see yours? Your arm? See OK?" you say pointing to his arm.

He holds it up and looks at it, somewhat confused, but you extend your good arm and, gently grasping his, pull it towards you. You rub your fingers on his skin a bit. It feels a bit strange. Somehow it feels almost exactly like human skin, yet it somehow feels tougher in some way. It's almost how some kinds of glass or plastic can just _feel_ cheap and easy to break, while others feel very sturdy and strong, yet they still obviously feel like plastic or glass respectively.

Even though his skin doesn't feel any rougher or thicker than your own, it still somehow just seems more durable. It's not even less pliable or elastic, it's almost _exactly_ like human skin except for the fact that it simply feels sturdier somehow. You wonder if he could walk through the blackberry thickets dotted around town without feeling any pain from the thorns.

Another thing that strikes you again is how warm he feels. Almost feverish. You remind yourself that his faster metabolism produces more body heat and that this is probably a normal temperature for him.

You rub your hand up and down his arm a few times and look at his hand a bit. Other than the claws, it doesn't look different from a human's hand much at all. Even his fingerprints look human. You wonder why convergent evolution would produce two, almost identical body types on two different planets from two entirely different species; one insectoid, one mammalian.

You shrug and release his arm, whereupon he pulls it away gently. The uncomfortable feeling that was hanging in the air returns, so you stand slowly, mindful of your near fall down the stairs, whereupon he extends both of his arms to either side of you in case you stumble again.

"I'm going to go take a shower. Don't worry I'll be fine." You say with a smile.

He gives you an odd, but curious look and follows you a few paces behind until you enter the bathroom and flash what you hope is a soothing smile and wave of the hand before closing the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> laaaa  
>  _A hesitation noise. Like "umm", "uhh", "er", et. al._  
>   
>  ~Can I see it?~  
> INT see-NOMINALIZE-SUB.NSENT.COPULA good-PM.NSENT.COPULA  
> "to t́apanruʃtar nixainerole?"


	4. Flow

You turn on the water, remembering your doctor's advice about not taking too warm of a shower. You look down at your arm as you notice it starting to hurt a bit more. You return to your room for a moment, taking another one of the pain-pills the doctor prescribed. You hear Karkat doing something downstairs in the kitchen, occasionally muttering what sounds like a swear to himself, but figure he knows what he's doing.

You then return to the bathroom, disrobe, and slowly and carefully step into the shower being careful not to do anything that might cause you to pass out again. You shower leisurely, taking care not to over-use your injured arm. The strange thing is, it doesn't feel crippled so much as it just hurts. You actually need to will yourself not to use it because, despite the pain, it doesn't feel like it's been so injured that just moving it around is going to hurt it. It's more of a dull throbbing pain than anything. You gingerly stretch it out in front of you, spreading your fingers as you do so, and can feel a tightness in the muscle which is incredibly uncomfortable but not particularly painful. You assume that it's a good sign and are hopeful that it'll heal well.

Finishing, you step out and dry yourself, dressing a bit more carefully after being a bit too cavalier with your arm results in a jet of pain shooting up it. Apparently, so long as you move it slowly there's no pain, but by making a sudden movement with it it certainly caused more than just discomfort. You exit and find Karkat standing in the doorway to your room. He motions you to come over and when you enter your room you find a plate of food prepared for you. It doesn't look quite as appetizing as something you could've made yourself, but it looks edible enough and you don't want to be rude.

You sit at your desk and take a bite. Despite its appearance, it's actually not that bad. You notice him intently staring at you so you smile at him. "It's pretty good, thank you!" you say. He turns away quickly and looks very stiff and uncomfortable. You eat slowly, trying to think of things to say but keep coming up empty. You think you can feel the pill you just took kicking in, and it's definitely starting to hit you hard. You body feels tingly and light, and you're starting to feel tired.

You slow down your pace of eating as you become full and can feel yourself spacing out more and more. You go to set the plate on your nightstand and lose your co-ordination and almost drop the plate.

"to nixaili!?" he shouts out.

"What?" you respond, still a bit out of it.

He gets really close to your face, staring intently at your eyes. First one, then the other, then back again.

"to— leee— OK? John is OK?" he says. "Go leee..." he hesitates for a moment, "xlaransi? lee, uh, m— med— doc— uh" he looks at you as if expecting an answer of some sort but you're a bit slow on the uptake.

"What?" you say, "I don't understand."

He rushes out of the room and quickly returns with a phone. "People, go people?" he says, pointing at the phone. "John no OK?"

You start to piece things together. "No, I'm fine", you say. He doesn't seem to accept your answer though. "John OK. John took pills. See?" You pick up the bottle and give it a shake. "Pills. Sleepy." You say, miming the action of sleep by placing your hands together and bringing them up to the side of your face and tilting your head against them. "John is OK."

He looks at you a bit skeptically for a moment, seemingly trying to appraise the situation. He picks up the bottle of pills, struggles to open it for a moment, before bringing it close to his eye and looking inside the bottle. He takes a sniff of the open bottle, then sticks a finger inside of it, gathering up some of the powdery reside on his fingertip before licking it. He grimaces slightly in disgust upon tasting the residue, but seems to understand what's going on.

"Yeah, I think I'm going to take a nap. But I'm OK", you add the last part to try to reassure him. He gives a bit of a "Humpf!" kind of sound and takes the plate out with him. You wonder if his irascible personality is going to come out again as you get better, since it seems rather clear that he's mostly only helping you out because he feels guilty, or possibly afraid of what would happen to him were you to send him back.

A wave of of warm dizziness washes over you and you decide to get into bed while you're able. You didn't really feel one pill all that much, so you're surprised at just how much two of them hit you. You take your glasses off, and don't even bother taking any of your clothes off since you just don't care. The waves washing over your body are getting better and better and it almost feels like your eyes might be rolling up into your head but again, you don't care. You used to wonder how people could develop an addiction to pills, but it's clear as day now. If you could move, you'd want to take another, but there's _just_ enough rationality left inside your head that's whispering to be careful with the remainder of them, and to be careful not to take a second one until the full four hours have passed like the doctor said. The last thing you remember hearing before drifting off to sleep is a crash coming from somewhere far away and Karkat swearing again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Are you OK!? ~  
> "to nixaili!?"


	5. Pair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee, so another chapter is out. It's a bit longer than the last one. I hope it was worth the wait! ^_^

You wake after what feels like a few hours have passed and stretch. That warm, fuzzy feeling is still lingering in your body, but it's diminished greatly. The first thought that pops into your head is to reach for another pill, but the more logical part of your brain quickly convinces you that it would be a bad idea to succumb to addiction so early in life, so you will yourself to focus on other things.

You turn and stretch again, and pull your leg out from under something heavy. You reach for your glasses, and see that Karkat has splayed himself over the side of the bed; his head formerly having rested on your leg. He stirs a bit, but doesn't wake up. It's no wonder that he'd feel so tired after everything he's been through in the last few days. He makes a faint grunting noise and grimaces, wiping away the peaceful and beautiful face of his for a moment.

You quietly lean closer, eager to get a better look at his face and horns. You watch him silently for a moment, before leaning in even closer to examine them in more detail. They seem to be colored from within. The very outer layer seems to be transparent. The red and orange parts that seem to have a clearly and sharply delineated point between them when viewed from a distance actually have a small area where the color diffuses between them. Being this close, you can clearly see a thin band where the red diffuses into the orange, and the orange into the yellow.

He makes another noise, which sounds a bit more pained this time. You watch him for a moment as he stirs a bit, and lean back since it seems like he's waking up. He doesn't seem to rouse fully, and it quickly becomes apparent that he's having a nightmare. As you wonder whether or not waking him would be a good idea, he seems to become more and more agitated. It seems like he's in a great struggle for his life, and must clearly be screaming for help with the noises he's making now, muted as though they may be.

You decide to gently wake him up, and touch his shoulder and rock him a bit. He moves a bit, but doesn't wake up. You shake him a bit harder and call out his name, and he awakens with a start. He jumps back with a shriek and nearly falls off the bed as he struggles against an unknown assailant. He takes a swing at you with his claws, which you only narrowly avoid, as he tumbles backwards, catching himself on an arm instead of landing completely flat on his back. Still sitting in bed, you turn away from him as he does so, instinctively protecting your injured arm by turning it towards the wall.

His eyes dart around the room for a moment, trying to make sense of things. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you speak to him.

"It's OK, you're here with me. It was only a dream", you hope that your calm tone of voice will soothe him at least somewhat.

He glares at you with such hatred and contempt, and says that same word again with such venom, it's denigratory meaning is quite clear. "Korteŋna" he spits out at you, before quickly standing and walking out of the room. You hear the door to his room shut rather unquietly.

You're a bit stunned. You're not sure what it was you did that caused such a reaction from him. Was it touching him? Was it waking him? You're not quite sure.

You rise out of bed and catch a glance of your pill bottle again. You walk over to it, picking it up, and try to detach yourself from the feelings and desire to take another one. It's almost interesting in a way. If you try to separate your mind from the cravings in your body, it's almost comical at just how much your body is willing you to take another one, with your mind just laughing at the absurdity of it. How could something so mundane cause such a craving within your body, you wonder to yourself, smiling at the absurdity of it. You replace the bottle on the nightstand, content that you still have enough self-control to keep yourself in check. You smile to yourself again knowing just how much stronger you've become since your father passed.

You feel like you'll probably be getting hungry soon, so you decide to head down to the kitchen. With the limitations of your injured arm, you figure that with the extra time it will take to make anything, that by the time you're actually finished cooking you'll be feeling a lot more hungry than you are right now.

You descend the stairs and realize that you'll also need to wash the dishes too. You don't particularly feel like using your arm so excessively, so you decide to just have a bowl of cereal instead. You pour a bowl and start eating it, only to hear Karkat's door open and him start to descend the stairs. You tense up a bit, uncertain of how he's going to react to seeing you after your last encounter only a few minutes before.

He stops in the doorway of the kitchen, visibly nervous, and speaks. "Uh, sorry" he pauses before continuing, "Before", he says pointing up towards your room, "Before, not John. Bad Kort— Bad human at sleep-see." 

"You were dreaming about someone else?" you say, after pausing to interpret his words.

"Uh..."

"I mean, at sleep-time, the bad human was not John?"

He pauses for a moment before answering, "Yes. In slave-place, lots bad human."

Realising what that means, you speak "So you were having a dream about that time then?"

"Uh..." He says, clearly not understanding.

"Um, Karkat have- Karkat see bad human from slave place at sleep-time?" you say, trying to keep your language as simple as possible.

"Yes... bad human see upstairs" he repeats. His face falls a bit before continuing, "Cut better?" he says as he makes a sawing motion with one hand over the claws of his other. He's clearly asking if you'd rather cut his claws off given recent events.

You shake your head, "No, you're still getting used to this place. And me", you add. He seems uncertain of what you've said so you repeat, "No, no cut. Karkat new. John new. After time, get better. Yes?"

He nods his head cautiously, as if he gets the main point, but not necessarily the full idea of what you've said.

"Do you want some?" you say, offering him the box of cereal, not wanting to continue this line of conversation and hoping to reinforce the fact that you don't care about punishing him in any way. Though honestly speaking, you do actually feel afraid of him at some level. He's a bit unstable and clearly stronger than you are by a long shot. You have a feeling that even an average-sized adult human would only be an equal to him. You know that you're probably not going to ever be stronger than he is, but also seem to somehow know that if you can just show him that you're willing to be his friend and not a slave-master that he'll eventually calm down and accept that maybe, just maybe, you're different from the only other humans he's dealt with in life so far, who have done nothing but hurt him.

Taking the box, he examines it and takes a sniff, wrinkling his nose at it.

"Well, you're supposed to add milk to it too" you say.

He points to the fridge, "Other stuff, OK?" he asks.

"Sure, take what you'd like" you say.

He cautiously moves towards the fridge, eyeing you suspiciously for a moment before opening it. You turn back to your cereal as he rummages around in the fridge. Grabbing a bowl and spoon, as well as something else from the fridge before sitting, he pours himself a bowl of cereal and then takes out a piece of bologna and starts ripping it into pieces, dropping them on his cereal as he does so.

"Uh, that's not normally how we eat that", you say. He freezes and stares at you in confusion before you continue, "Uh, nevermind. I guess if that's what you want to eat then its fine."

You watch as he continues to shred several pieces onto his cereal, then pours some milk on it before cautiously taking a bite. Seemingly content with his creation, he eats it as if it's a perfectly normal thing as you try not to stare or say anything about it.

The two of you sit in silence as you eat your meal. You slow down your pace of eating, hoping to drag out the silence a bit since you can feel something awkward looming. He finishes as you're slowly spooning the remaining milk into your mouth rather than just bringing the bowl up to it and drinking it like you usually would when you're at home; no need keeping up appearances if no one's going to see, you figure.

"Why John good at Karkat?" he asks, breaking the awkward silence.

"I don't know..." you hesitate, "I guess I just feel sorry for you." You realize what you've said and try to correct yourself, "I mean, I think you're nice— in your own way I guess, but I can tell that you've just had a lot of bad stuff happen to you and that you just want to be left alone mostly. I thought I could give you a nice home— I mean, I thought maybe you could just live with me and it'd pretty nice. I mean— well, I also kinda hope that maybe you'll understand that we're not all like the people that hurt you", you say. Realizing that he's just staring at you blankly, you try to simplify things, "Um, all humans not bad. John want Karkat to see that good humans help trolls. John want Karkat to live here and be happy. John want Karkat to—" you pause for a moment, "John want Karkat to not be scared anymore" you say as you realize that most of his bad attitude is probably because he's just afraid of humans. Afraid of being hurt, and afraid of just being treated like a slave, not having his feelings acknowledged, or even the fact that he's a sentient being with hopes and dreams of his own. You can't even imagine what it would be like to go through the things he's undoubtedly gone through.

"Do you understand?" you ask, as he seems to still be staring you.

With the expression on his face, it seems like he feels somewhat hurt, or maybe just sad, but still guarded. "Why? Why John not same other— other human?"

You shrug, "I don't know. I think most of us— I mean, all humans not bad. Some are stupid. Some are nice. Some are bad. Lots of humans are different." You pause for a moment. Lowering your head, you continue, "I like Karkat. Karkat is nice. I want Karkat to be happy." You keep your eyes lowered, embarrassed at professing your feelings for him like this. It's not a full-blown profession of love, but you figure it's probably pretty obvious even to a non-native speaker who's probably not fully aware of your cultural norms that you have a crush on him. Even so, you're hoping that he'll focus more on your general desire to see him happy than your deeper feelings for him, which you recognize isn't full-blown love, but you're fully aware that your feelings towards him are more than just friendship.

He remains silent for a moment, before speaking. "Before, sorry." He grimaces and pauses for a moment before continuing, "Karkat... see bad sleep-see. Say bad at John. John nice, not want John hurt." You glance up and see him seemingly just as uncomfortable as you are. He seems to be looking to the side and averting his gaze just as much as you are.

"It's OK", you say. "I understand."

There's an awkward pause for a moment before he stands, "Karkat do", he says as he takes your bowl and carries it over to the sink. You sit for a moment, before deciding to exit while you have an opportunity. ' _This is another fine mess you've gotten yourself into_ ', you think to yourself. You wonder if you had known before what you know now, whether or not you'd have actually brought him home. It was definitely a spur of the moment kind of thing, and while you certainly aren't going to just get rid of him now that he's here, you can't help but wonder how the two of you are going to get along with such a major barrier between the two of you. Even without the language barrier, what is he going to do all day? Sit and watch TV? Play video games? At least your schoolwork keeps you busy. You've been thinking about getting a job soon too. You know someone who would be willing to pay you to come in and help them with some light cleaning and general tidying up of their store, but Karkat's not going to have anything to do all day. You'll need to come up with something for him to do so that he doesn't get completely consumed with boredom.

You make your way upstairs and brush your teeth before heading into your room. You close the door almost completely, but leave a sliver open to hear what's going on downstairs. Still hearing Karkat in the kitchen, you quickly change into a loose-fitting t-shirt and shorts before sitting down at your desk. You play around on the internet for a bit, ostensibly to search for some way to help Karkat, but quickly drift off into random trivialities.

You hear Karkat come up the stairs and glance at the clock; it's 8:30. He pauses outside your door for a moment before knocking.

"čan— laaaa— John" he corrects himself. "In, OK?"

"Sure", you say quietly.

He pushes open the door and you see him holding one of the picture books you bought earlier. The ones that seemed to provoke such a strong reaction from him before. He seems very sheepish.

"Help Karkat?" he asks, pointing to the picture book he's holding.

"Umm, what do you want me to do?" you say, feeling a bit afraid that a wrong move might set him off again.

"Help Karkat better say", he says, opening the book and pointing to a picture. "What— How say?" he asks.

You pause for a moment, unsure of exactly what to do before speaking. "Window", you say.

"Weendow", he repeats.

You shake your head, "Window" you repeat.

"Window", he says, taking more effort to say the word. He points to another object in the scene, "This?"

"Rug", you say.

This continues on, with you eventually sitting on the floor and inviting him to join you. You go through several pages before he goes back and tries to name them himself. Despite making a few mistakes, which you correct, he actually seems to have a good memory. Either that, or he's a fast learner. You doubt you'd be able to remember so many of them were your positions reversed. He seems to tire after a bit, so you decide to stop for the night. The two of you sit in silence for a moment, before you decide to ask how some of these things are said in his language.

Opening up the book, you point to a picture. "How do you say this?"

"...table?" he responds.

"No, I mean, how do you say it in Alternian?" He remains silent, so you repeat yourself more slowly, "How do you say this in Alternian?"

He seems confused for a moment before answering, "kalaro?"

"Kalaro?" you repeat.

He shakes his head. "kalaro" he repeats.

"Galaro?" you say, only to have him shake his head. "Kalaro?" you try again. He makes a face where you can tell you're making some kind of a major mistake, but can't quite tell what it is you're doing wrong. You decide to move on to another one. "This one?" you say, pointing to a chair.

"noraþ", he says.

You repeat it, and his reaction seems to indicate that you've pronounced it well enough.

"This?" you say, holding up the book itself.

"seř" he says.

The way the 'r' is trilled is something you're hesitant to even attempt, so you decide to move ahead without attempting to say it.

"The book is on the table", you say. He stares at you a bit blankly, as if he gets enough of what you said but not enough to understand the whole thing. You decide to act it out. "Book" you say, holding it up. "The book is _under_ the table", you say as you put it under your desk. Then, placing it on top, you say "The book is _on_ the table", enunciating as best you can.

"seřtar kalarotenanero" he says.

"Wait, say it slower. Sloooower please."

He seems slightly annoyed, but complies. "seřtar kalarotena nero", he says.

"Serzh tar, kalarow tena nerow", you repeat, as you grab a notebook and write it down.

He gives you a look that clearly says something like, ' _How can you butcher the pronunciation so badly, it can't be that hard to repeat what I just said_ ', but instead says, "Yes, OK", albeit a bit sarcastically.

You smile softly. Despite the fact that he's clearly not impressed with your pronunciation, he actually seems to be a bit surprised and even pleased that you'd even think to ask him in the first place.

"How about 'the book is _under_ the table'?" you ask, again miming the movements.

He pauses for a moment before answering, "seřtar kalaroetananero." He seems to anticipate your next question, and repeats it slowly, "seřtar kalaroetanu nero."

You jot down the sentences and compare them. "So ' _tena_ ' is ' _on_ ' and ' _etanu_ ' is ' _under_ '?" you ask. Getting a blank look, you place the book on top of the desk and say, "tena." Then, placing it beneath the desk, you say "etanu." "On, under, on, under" you say, before again repeating the Alternian version of the words you've just said.

He seems to be genuinely confused. He takes the book from you and places it on top of the table, "kalarotena", he says before placing it underneath and saying, "kalaroetanu." He seems to notice you staring at him somewhat confused and just shrugs his shoulders.

"So you can't just say ' _tena_ ' or ' _etanu_ '?" you ask.

"kalarotena, kalaroetanu" he says, trying to enunciate well and with an obvious tone of _what-is-it-about-this-totally-fucking-simple-thing-that-you-just-can't-seem-to-understand_.

You don't quite understand why at first, but when you think about it a bit more, you wonder if just saying those words by themselves is like saying " _-tion_ " in English and expecting it to mean something without having another word attached to it.

You go through a few more words in the picture book, writing down their pronunciation as best you can until you get to this particular one.

"xaro", he says.

"Harrow?" you repeat.

He makes a face that almost looks like he's in pain before repeating himself more clearly, "xaro, xaro, xa— xa— xa— xaro!"

"Haro?" you say again.

He points at the photo of a flower, "xaro" he says. Then, pointing at his foot, he says, "haro" and continues to alternate repeating between the two of them as he points.

You manage to make a rougher sound, "kharo?" whereupon he brings his palm to his face and mutters something under his breath that you can't quite make out but is clearly expressing extreme annoyance.

"What was that?" you ask.

"No— human— not say good. Not same."

"Maybe I just need more practice?"

He gives you a strangely deadpan look that seems like he not only completely understood what you just said, but completely disagrees with it in a, ' _don't fucking kid yourself you weak and puny Earthling_ ' kind of way. You decide to just move along.

"Well, maybe we can try some more tomorrow. I want to go to bed. Are you tired?"

"laaa- Small— Little? Little tired", he says. "Fire at down-place?" he asks.

"Um, maybe tomorrow night. I don't want to make a fire now."

He sighs dejectedly. You then notice that not only is he wearing a sweater, but it looks like he's wearing at least two t-shirts underneath it. While you haven't seen him shiver yet, it's pretty clear that he's not comfortable with the house this cold; his physiology is just not designed for this kind of climate.

"Hang on", you say, as you step past him and head down to the garage. You rummage around for a bit before you find an old space heater. You only really ever used it on the coldest days of winter, but now prefer to just use the central heater since you figure you might as well be comfortable _everywhere_ in your own house, not just in a single room. It hasn't seen much use recently, so you dust it off and then pick it up as best you can with one hand and notice Karkat, having followed you, is now standing in the doorway watching you curiously.

"Here", you say, handing it to him.

He looks at it quizzically for a moment before taking it. You head upstairs, motioning him to follow you. You head to the end of the hallway and stop in front of his room.

"Can I go in?" you ask.

He nods his head and you turn the knob and enter. You take the space heater from him and set it down across from his pile of blankets, pillows and other miscellaneous stuff he's using as bedding. Plugging it in, you turn it on. It gives off a somewhat strong smell of dust as it heats up, but it starts to dissipate as Karkat sits in front of it, holding his hands out in front of it warming them up.

"yateorikarloranna nutamisilakas ʃal sitaḱaʂaknayoiona ḱalarleentaruʃřuk ʃjanalaentaekʃuhalni", he says quietly to himself, sounding somewhat incredulous.

"This is yours now", you say, "You can use it as much as you want."

He looks up at you with a sense of surprise on his face. After a short pause, he speaks, "Thank you", he says.

"You're welcome!" you say with a smile on your face. "Good night!" you say as you leave his room and head for your own. You close the door and change into your underwear. You remove the bandage from your arm and inspect it. It's started to hurt a little bit, and it looks like one of the cuts is a bit red and swollen, but you figure it's probably normal. You eye the pill bottle again, and decide to just take half of one, hoping that it'll just take the edge off the pain and not send you to cloud nine again. Swallowing the pill, you sit down on your bed and hear a knock at the door. You hurriedly sit in bed and pull the covers over you before answering, "What is it?"

The door opens a bit, "OK?" Karkat calls out.

"Yes, OK. What is it?" you say, feeling a bit intruded upon.

The door swings open fully, and Karkat is standing there with a pillow and a pile of blankets. "Uh— if John need help? Uh— hurt-part. Hurt-part do bad, need help?", he says pointing to his arm as he walks into the room, drops the pile of assorted bed-ware and begins laying it out on the floor next to your bed.

"Uh, no, I'm fine. I'm OK" you protest.

"No, Karkat help John. OK."

You open your mouth to protest but realize it probably wouldn't work. You could grab some of his blankets and throw them out of your room, but you don't want to come across as being that rude.

Sighing, you acquiesce. "Alright, but just this one night. I'm really fine now."

He finishes arranging the blankets on the floor and begins taking his shirt off but suddenly stops when he sees you staring at him. Apologizing, you turn away, feeling your cheeks start to blush. You then hear him climb straight into bed without even removing his shirt. You wonder if he'll be warm enough throughout the night or if the blankets he has will actually be enough to keep him comfortable without the space heater since he showed up outside your door having removed the sweater and multiple layers of clothing he was wearing previously..

"Good night", you say, as you remove your glasses and turn off the light.

"Kut— Goot nait. Good night", he says, trying to enunciate the words properly.

You smile softly to yourself at his efforts to try so hard. By all accounts, he should have been taught English at the academies that prepare trolls for sale. It could only be through his outright refusal and determination that he wouldn't have learned it, and the fact that he actually seems to want to try now because of your efforts must mean he wants to bridge some kind of connection with you. Gently cradling your injured arm as you roll over, you soon feel sleep embracing you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~The book is on the table~  
> book-SU.COPULA.INAN table-ADE-PM.COPULA  
> "seřtar kalarotenanero" he says.
> 
> ~The book is under the table~  
> book-SU.COPULA.INAN table-SUBE-PM.COPULA  
> "seřtar kalaroetananero."
> 
> ~I can't believe a species this primitive would actually have technology like this~  
> to_this_extent-primitive-ADJ species-ERG this.DET technology-such_a_thing-ACC to_possess-3PL/3PL-NOM-QUOT to_believe.1SG/3SG.POT.NET  
> "yateorikarloranna nutamisilakas ʃal sitaḱaʂaknayoiona ḱalarleentaruʃřuk ʃjanalaentaekʃuhalni",


	6. Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay in continuing this fic. I've been so busy since I've started a new full-time job that I haven't had the same amount of free time that I used too. I thank everyone for waiting for me! ^_^

You wake during the night, hearing Karkat tossing and turning. It sounds like he's having a nightmare again. Reaching out, you turn on the lamp on your nightstand. You watch him for a moment, and decide to risk waking him.

"Karkat", you call out to him first. "Karkat", you say louder. He's still tossing and turning, and making pained noises. His arms are both under the covers, so you feel reasonably safe from his claws. You reach out, and give him a quick but hard shake before quickly retreating. He rouses with a start and a shout.

"It's OK Karkat, it was just a nightmare", you say, trying to reassure him. He exhales with a frustrated groan. He's breathing hard, but seems to understand where he is. "Are you OK?" you ask him.

He just grunts, and puts an arm over his eyes. After a moment, he stands and walks out of the room. You hear the bathroom door close, and decide to just sit and wait for him. He comes back and pauses for a moment after shutting the door, before walking over and gently sitting on the edge of your bed.

"leee, Karkat sleep here OK?" he says, pointing at your bed.

Your heart skips a beat, and you almost refuse immediately, not wanting to even put yourself in a position where you might accidentally end up doing something inappropriate; sometimes the human body just reacts in certain ways after all. However, you can clearly see that he's trying to hide the fact that he's feeling scared, and probably a little lonely as well. You know that he's simply too proud to come out and say it though.

"OK", you say, "Climb in."

He hesitates for a moment, but you motion him in and he climbs under the covers. Your bed isn't really big enough for the two of you to not be touching, so you're not quite sure how you're going to manage things, but you figure you'll let him decide. You reach over him, turning off the light, having to rest some of your weight on him in the process. You lie in bed on your back, feeling awkward and stiff, but he rolls over and wraps his arms around you, burying his face in your shoulder and cocking a leg around you. You feel extremely uncomfortable at how sudden it happens, but then he speaks, "Mmm, nice, warm. Soft", he inhales deeply, "John nice, John nice" he says in a half-asleep manner, his voice trailing off towards the end.

You can't help but relax; maybe he just wants to cuddle? For all you know, maybe in his culture this kind of physical contact is considered normal. You put your good arm around his shoulders and rest your cheek on the side of his head, adjusting it slightly when your first attempt results in a horn poking you. Even though your hormones are running wild, you manage to distract your mind enough to fall asleep.

You wake up in the morning and stretch. Neither of you seem to have moved much from your original positions last night, other than the fact that now Karkat's leg is wrapped even more firmly around your own. Given that it's morning, it's not helping the fact that that particular area of your body is quite excited. You wiggle around a bit, trying to scoot away, but Karkat grips you even tighter, moving his leg higher and even closer to that part of your body that you _really_ don't want him to brush up against. At least, not in this context. Realising that you have little choice, you simply reach down and push his leg to the side. He doesn't seem to be fully awake, but he still seems to protest it somehow, though at least he doesn't try to put it back this time.

You gently roll him away from you. He groans again, but complies and scoots away from you. Sitting up, you feel a sharp pain shoot up your arm when you push yourself up. You gently pull off the bandage and inspect it. One of the cuts seems a bit swollen. You gently poke at it and it feels hard and swollen. You decide to go into the bathroom where the light is better, but Karkat is between you and the side of the bed that's not pushed up against the wall.

"Hey Karkat", you say. "Hey, I need to go to the bathroom and check this. Can you move over?"

He lets out a long groan, and slowly sits up. He shakes his head, not seeming to be completely awake yet. He looks at you briefly, then down at your arm. He focuses in on it, and gently grabs your hand, outstretching your arm towards him. He studies it intently, even sniffing it a few times. He looks up at your eyes for a moment, then back to your arm. You feel a bit uncomfortable as he starts gently poking it, and try to pull away, but he holds fast. He then puts both his thumbs on either side of the cut that's obviously swollen, and before you can caution him or pull away, he presses down hard.

There's a flash of pain before you both hear and feel something pop deep within your arm. You close your eyes and grit your teeth in pain, opening them when you feel something warm running down your arm. You look at it and there's a stream of bloody pus running down your arm, already dripping off and staining the sheets.

"What the hell!" you scream as you try to pull your arm away. "All of that for just asking you to move over!?" He gets a shocked look on his face and relaxes his grip, but doesn't let go. "LET GO!" you shout as you give him a hard shove with your other arm, causing him to lose his balance and tumble over the side of the bed. You quickly rush out of the room and head into the bathroom. Locking the door, you place your arm in the sink and run water over it for a moment. Pulling it out, you gently squeeze it and more pus oozes out. You try to get as much out as you can, before rinsing it off again. You pat it dry with a tissue, and inspect it closely. One of the sutures broke, or more accurately, the thin piece of skin it was threaded through broke. Gently squeezing it so it opens up, you can see fairly deep into the wound; past a thin layer of fat all the way down into the muscle. You try to steady yourself by reminding yourself that your arms don't exactly have a lot of fat on them, so just because you can see down to the muscle, doesn't necessarily mean that it's that bad. You realize you need to go to a doctor to get this fixed. You wrap it in a bandage as best you can, and decide to walk to your family doctor rather than go back to the ER, since you can be there quicker than a cab ride would take.

You open the bathroom door and see Karkat standing outside the door to your room. With the quick glance you give him, he clearly looks remorseful, but you run down the stairs as you see him try to reach out to you. You duck into the laundry room, and grab the first shirt and pair of pants you see and rush out into the foyer. Karkat is standing on the stairs about half-way down. You grab your shoes and quickly make your way onto the front porch, slamming the door behind you. You manage to get them on before the front door starts to open and you bolt down the street, occasionally casting a quick glance behind you. When you get to the end of the block, you stop for a moment. Casting a longer glance behind you, you don't see Karkat following, so you continue to head on towards your local doctor.

His office is only about a mile and a half away, so you manage to cover the distance in a little over twenty minutes because you walk quickly. Arriving, you speak to the receptionist, "Is doctor Cardish in? I really need him to look at my arm."

The receptionist looks down at your arm and sees the blood that's oozed through the bandage and quickly ushers you into a waiting room, telling you he'll be right in.

Doctor Cardish has been your doctor since you were little. He's an older gentleman, with a very kind bedside manner. You trust him a lot. He's always had a way of making things like getting shots and other unpleasant things seem like they're not so bad. There's a knock and then he opens the door.

"Well John, what seems to be the matter?" he says in his kindly voice.

You tell him about your visit to the emergency room the other day, and the impetus behind it, as well as what happened this morning. Finishing, you wonder out loud, "I wonder why he did that to me. He squeezed my arm really hard even though I told him to stop..."

Doctor Cardish hasn't said much up until this point, letting you finish your story. "Maybe he thought he was helping?"

"Helping?" you ask.

"Trolls heal better and faster than we do, and a wound can't heal if there's pus in it. Doctors have known about that for thousands of years. There's even a saying in Latin that the ancient Roman doctors had, 'Ubi pus ibi evacua'. It means, 'Where there is pus, evacuate it'. Maybe he thought he was doing you a favor by doing himself? Like how sometimes it's easier to have someone else pull a bandaid off instead of doing it yourself? Trolls wouldn't need to go to a doctor for something like this, it would heal on its own for the most part. He may not have known how much more fragile human bodies are."

His words really resonate with you. You'd assumed that Karkat had done what he did because he was angry with you, especially considering your past interactions, but now that you think back on it, he hadn't seemed angry at all.

"Well anyway, lets take a look", he says, snapping you out of your train of thought.

He removes the bandage and looks at it intently, gently poking things here and there. "Does this hurt?" he asks a few times as he does so, some of which you respond to affirmatively.

"Is it bad?" you ask.

"Not really", he says, "You're young and healthy, and infections like this tend to happen from time to time. To be quite honest, these sutures weren't really done properly. They should've been placed closer together and been done in layers, not just at the top. It's no wonder it got infected, whoever did this was rather sloppy; I'd sure like to have a few words with him. Was he young?"

You nod your head, "Not like, super young, but maybe early thirties?"

He makes noise of contemplation, "Hmm, well, I hope he gets better in the future. I'm surprised they let some of these people out of medical school. The doctor who supervised _me_ would've sent me right back to year-one if I'd done something like that, but lets not worry about that now", he says. "Your other wounds look just fine. They weren't as deep, so even if he didn't make two layers they'll be fine. They seem to be healing well, so I don't want to touch them. _This_ one on the other hand", he says gesturing to the infected one that popped open, "Just needs a little bit of care and it'll be fine, so don't worry about it too much" he says with a smile, "Just sit tight for a moment, I'll be right back."

With that he leaves the room and returns a few minutes later pushing a small tray with various instruments on it. "Lets get you numb first, since that will take a few minutes to kick in."

He gives you several small injections around the wound, and while you wince, you tolerate it well. He then proceeds to explain to you how he's going to resuture it, and first needs to remove the remaining sutures in it so he can flush out the wound with antiseptics.

He begins the procedure, and while you mostly look away, you occasionally cast back a quick glance at your arm. He talks you through it, informing you when he's removed the old sutures; that he's now irrigating it with antiseptics, whereupon you feel the cool fluid running down the side of your arm as he gently wipes it up; how he's putting in a layer of "dissolvable sutures" that your body will absorb in a few weeks, but will hold fast until it heals; and how he's now putting in new sutures that should hold up better, since he's also putting in more of them than there were before.

He finishes, and wipes down the outside of your arm with more antiseptic, saying you should be fine and don't need to come back until you want to get the sutures removed. He pauses for a moment before saying that you could probably just do it yourself if you wanted to. He tells you to wait two to three weeks, and if it seems like it's healed well, to just take a hot shower and clip them with a small pair of scissors and then gently pull them out.

He adds that if you have any doubts, to come in and he'll do it for you, but then adds that he knows that you like being independent and says with a smile that being able to say you removed your own stitches is a cool thing to be able to brag about. He continues by saying that you don't need to come back unless it starts hurting, or seems unusual in some way.

You thank him, and decide to ask him about Karkat. You explain how you came about purchasing him, the problems he's had with his past owners, and how this is the second time he's injured you. You then ask him if he knows anything about trolls and why Karkat would do all the things he did to you.

He gets a serious look on his face before speaking, "When I was younger, I worked at an ' _Academy_ '", he says the word with spiteful contempt unbecoming of his usual calm demeanor. "I quit after a few years. I thought I could make it a better place, but I realized I was just enabling its existence. Do you know how they treat trolls there, John?"

You shake your head, "No"

"They basically treat them like slaves— No, even worse than slaves. They're beaten for even minor transgressions. It's not uncommon for them to be permanently crippled. They try to avoid that, since they can't sell them as easily or for as much money, but the people who work there are sadists. I tried to tell myself that by being there I was giving them better medical care than they would have received otherwise, but I realized that by having a doctor there it allowed them to treat them even more severely. I know they just found another replacement, but at least _I_ wasn't a part of it anymore", he pauses for a moment, seemingly assesing your reaction before continuing, "I even saw some of them attacked by the staff just for fun. They're basically tortured into submission. The ones they can't break, they just kill", he lets out a wry laugh, "' _There's plenty more where that came from!_ ' They'd say that every time they killed one of them."

His words echo inside your head. They completely shatter your conceptions of how you thought things were. Everything has been a lie. All the things you were told, all the pictures you've been shown, all of them are lies. As much as you don't want to believe it, you somehow know his words are true. You can just _feel_ that they're true. There's simply too much that people don't talk about for there to be anything true about the happy lifestyle Trolls are supposed to enjoy in the Academies.

"If he lived through all of that..." You lower your head as you feel tears welling up in your eyes. "And I was going to get rid of him. No wonder he hates humans so much."

You sniffle a bit and Doctor Cardish hands you a tissue. "You can't take on all the world's problems, John. If he's dangerous or unstable then you need to do what's right for you."

You shake your head, "How could I live with myself knowing I was responsible for his death!?"

"For one, you don't know for certain that he'd be killed. You could try to find someone else to take him in. And you have to do what's right for you. What kind of life will you be living if you're afraid of him and don't feel safe in your own home?"

You remain deep in thought as he continues.

"You know John", he says in a caring tone, "You have a big heart; you try to help people as much as you can, but there's a fine line between caring and co-dependency. Co-dependency is where people take care of other people more than they take care of themself. It leads to burn-out and massive levels of stress. I know this because I myself struggle with wanting to help people too much sometimes. As a doctor, while I can treat people's wounds, I can't make them eat healthier or exercise more. I can't make people stop doing drugs either. All I can do is give them resources and treat any immediate injuries, so I can understand how hard it is sometimes. If you want to help him, there may not be much you can do other than giving him a safe space to live. He may never trust humans. Ultimately, you need to decide what's best for _you_ first, and then do what's best for him."

"Did I even do the right thing?" you ask as his words slowly sink in. "I mean..." you trail off as you feel wracked with guilt for what you're about to say, "I _did_ want to help him. After I went there I wasn't even going to buy one because of bad it all was, but I also kind of thought he was... cute. I think maybe I thought if we spent time together, he might start to feel the same way. I know that was such a stupid thing to do now, but I _do_ have genuine feelings for him now. I mean, maybe it's not true love yet, but it's definitely not just a crush anymore either. I just want him to be happy, even if he doesn't feel the same way towards me, but I just don't know what I'm going to do now", you say as you run your fingers through your hair and curl them into fists, pulling at your hair. Though you immediately relax the fingers of your injured arm as you feel the tension pulling on the new sutures.

"John, you're a good person. Even if your intentions weren't as pure as you thought, I don't believe for a second you would do anything to take advantage of him", you're surprised at how much relief those words give you; Doctor Cardish has almost been like a surrogate father to you and the words really do help soothe you. "You don't have to decide what to do right now, but you don't have to feel like you're trapped in the situation either. If you decide you can't live with him, sending him away to be killed isn't the only other option; there are many more, but they may take more effort to do. Whatever the case may be, you need to think about yourself too."

You sit for a while, contemplating what to do. "I can't decide yet. I think he genuinely _wants_ to try to just have a normal life, but is having a hard time adjusting. Maybe if it's not any better in a month or two, I'll have to do something, but for now it's too soon."

Doctor Cardish nods his head. He continues in his soft, kind voice, "That's a very adult decision. I'm sure your father would be proud." 

You feel more tears well up at the compliment.

"Now come on, lets get you home!" he says as he gives you a friendly pat on the shoulder. "Do you want a sucker?" he asks.

Despite feeling a little embarrassed at the childishness of accepting one at your age, you do so anyway. "Can I take two? One for Karkat?"

He smiles as he lets out a gentle laugh, "Of course! Strawberry?" he asks, knowing your favorite flavor.

"Yeah", you say sheepishly.

With that, you bid each other well and head toward home, feeling more hopeful about the future you've now committed yourself too.


	7. Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for taking so long to get this chapter up. My life got very busy very quickly and I've been so exhausted I've barely had the energy to do simple chores like laundry. I hope the few readers who were interested in this story haven't given up on it completely >_<
> 
> Fair warning, I let my inner-conlang geek out a bit in this one. A translation and interlinear gloss is provided in the chapter end notes.

You stop at a local convenience store to grab something for breakfast; as well as pick up a few snacks for later before resuming your trek home. You then realize it'd be better if you bought lunch now so you won't have to prepare anything later. Minimizing use of your injured arm seems like it can't be a bad idea. You stop at a take-out place and grab lunch for Karkat and yourself.

Arriving home, you cautiously enter the house, remembering how startled Karkat was that one time when you barged in rather noisily. Not seeing him in the foyer, you call out to him, "Karkat, I'm home!"

Pausing to listen for a response, you hear nothing. Still being cautious of him, since even though you're giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming the incident this morning was a cultural misunderstanding. Even _if_ you could use your other arm at full capacity he would still be more than a match for you. Besides, he seems like the kind of person who holds a grudge for a long time and the way you shoved him off the bed this morning is something he's probably not happy about.

You peek into the kitchen and, seeing nothing, put away the snacks. You call out to Karkat again and receive no response. Heading upstairs, you check your room and find it empty. You then head over to his and the door is ajar. You knock first, and slowly push it open when you receive no answer. Peeking in, and being mindful of your vow to not disturb or enter his room unnecessarily, you give a brief look around and clearly see that he's not in his room.

Puzzled, you head downstairs again and notice that the sliding glass door leading to the backyard is unlocked. You know that you always keep that door locked so you assume he must be out back. You open the door and step onto the patio. Not seeing anything immediately, you call out again, "Karkat!"

You wait for a moment but still hear no response. Your heart sinks as you begin to think that he may have run away. If he thought you were going to send him away, he may have decided to take his chances out in the wild, tracking collar be damned. You walk out into the yard and call out again, still not getting a response. Saddened and defeated, you turn around and head back towards the house, only to notice something. You see a form huddled close to the ground by the side of the house, in the shadows of the narrow path where the fence runs along side of it. You approach and see that it's Karkat. He's sitting on small pile of the surplus flat, hexagonal stepping stones that were used to create some of the walkways in the yard. He has his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his knees, and his face buried in his arms so that you can't see it.

"Karkat? Are you OK?" He doesn't respond. "Um, I have a sucker for you", you offer.

He stays still for a moment, but right when you're about to reach out to him to make sure he's OK, he moves only his fingers which hold a folded piece of paper between them that had been previously concealed in his palm.

You hesitate, and he waves the paper back and forth a few times with his fingers, moving no other part of his body. Taking it, you unfold it and read it. It's has some obvious spelling errors and is written in broken English, but it's comprehensible enough.

_John. Karkat am sorry. I not want hurt. Pleaze not madd. I not want away go. John try do naice at Karkat. Karkat did try nais at John. I not want die. When away go Karkat die. I am beeing good always. I no hurt. Please sorry._

It takes a moment for the magnitude of the note to sink in fully. After it does, you realize that Doctor Cardish was right; he only meant to help when he squeezed the pus out of your arm that morning. You remember that he was barely awake at the time, and probably wasn't thinking clearly about how that action would've been perceived by you. With the way he's now sitting in front of you almost completely frozen in place, you realize that he probably expects to ultimately die from this. Aggressive trolls are simply not tolerated in Earth society.

Your lip quivers a bit, but you maintain composure, "Karkat, it's OK. I know you meant well. I know Karkat not want hurt John", you say to try to console him. He doesn't move. Not knowing what else to do, you sit beside him. You keep a certain distance at first, but you slowly and gently take his hand into your own and just hold it. Not knowing what to say, you just sit there. A few moments pass, then a few more; eventually he raises his head and looks up at you.

You smile, "It's OK, see? I'm not mad," you say as you try to comfort him. It's then that you notice his eyes. They're oddly unfocused, but not in a way that seems to indicate a medical problem. It's like he's looking _through_ you rather than _at_ you. More disconcerting than that, his expression seems to be blank and distant; as if he were far away in the recesses of his own mind.

You feel your face soften with concern, and just squeeze his hand. You can't think of anything you could say at this point, so you just stare at him softly. While he seems to be staring through you at something far away.

After what feels like hours, a cold breeze tells you the temperature will soon start dropping quickly; there's probably a storm coming soon. You again remember the Alternian's low tolerance for cold and decide to get him in the house. You gently speak to him, getting him to stand and lead him inside. You set him down in front of the fireplace before stocking it with tinder and wood and subsequently lighting it. You then head into the kitchen and grab the take-out you bought and stick it in the microwave for a moment. By the time you take it out and return, the fire is quite strong and Karkat seems to be focused on it. You set the food, a plastic fork, and napkin in front of him before starting to eat your own. You eat quickly at first, slowing down when you realize he's not eating.

"Aren't you hungry?" you say, opening the styrofoam container in front of him. When he doesn't react, you continue, "C'mon, you'll feel better after you eat. Here! I've got a sucker for you for dessert!" you say cheerfully, pulling it out of your shirt pocket. When again he doesn't react, you realize how stupid you must sound. He's afraid he's going to die. He's been afraid all day long. So much so that he's almost literally _petrified_ ; he's nearly cataleptic in how he just seems to be frozen in place. He didn't resist your earlier attempt to bring him into the house in the slightest. Everything seems to hit you all at once. First you feel your eyes tear up; then despite your best effort at self-control, you feel your lip quiver and you quickly break down into tears.

You don't understand why. Maybe you're feeling his pain, maybe you're just overwhelmed by the situation you've gotten yourself into, maybe it's something else that you don't quite understand. All you know is that you're crying more than you have in a long time and you don't even know why. You didn't even really cry when your father died. You tried to be strong back then, but now, all of a sudden, there's just too much going on for you to maintain composure anymore.

After an amount of time that you're not sure is short or long, you feel a hand on yours but you don't react; all of the pent up emotions that were held inside of you are streaming out of your body as tears. When you feel an arm wrap around you followed by an embrace, you return it though you continue to sob violently.

You slowly begin to calm down slightly, which is when you realize that Karkat is also weeping as you notice his body is also occasionally wracked with a sob and his head, resting on your shoulder, emits the occasional sniffle.

You both remain there, holding each other, until your arms start to get tired. Not wanting to break the embrace, you cling to each other a little longer, but your arms are starting to feel numb so you gently pull back. After a moment, so does Karkat. Your faces are inches away from each other, and you again remind yourself that the tears of Alternians are the same color as their blood; there's no need to panic at Karkat's apparently blood-smeared face.

Realizing your shirt is probably already ruined from the stains that have sobbed down onto your shoulder, you pull up the hem of your shirt and wipe the remaining tears off his face as best you can. His eyes seem to light up with thanks, before he closes them and lets you continue to wipe the tear-streaks off his face as best you can. It still looks like he's smeared with blood, but at least you manage to get most of it. He opens his eyes again and you give him a quick kiss on the cheek. He seems to be surprised by it, but you just smile at him. On the surface, it was a friendly peck on the cheek, but there was real affection behind it and he seems to know that.

He sits there for a moment before he gently picks up your arm and sniffs the bandage on it before saying, "OK?" You nod. He gently outstretches your arm and cautiously drags his claws in circles around the unbandaged wounds a few times. You close your eyes. It feels kind of nice. It tickles a bit, but it's nice. Eventually, he releases your arm. You open your eyes and look at him for a moment before speaking, "That felt nice", you say. "Um, are you hungry?" you say, gesturing to the food he hasn't eaten yet since you don't know how else to transition from what just happened.

"Yes, thank you" he says, still with a marked accent, but for some reason his response seemed more instantaneous. He's seemed somewhat hesitant to speak to you in English so far, so the naturalness of his latest utterance seems strangely fluent. 

He opens the styrofoam container and takes a few small bites before stopping. He seems to ponder something for a moment before he resumes eating. You decide to return to your own meal and finish what's left. After finishing, he sets his empty container to the side and you stack it inside yours. He's staring stoically into the fire and begins to speak.

"to pel trolaiona ʃičkaakʃileentaxatjeťrojapel čikuptanero. laeena xlorona ḱalarlaapťroja tas laeenaťroja kuxai njeratai. kuxaiera ʃuxera ʃaxnaloraona ʃičkaleenxatjeroka kuxai, trolaipel maruʃax njerahalniroka.

ʃeʃʃuxona sufatliinxatjeroka kuxai tle xat́na matana trolnat́ularattamiona sitaḱaliixatjeťroja. ʃičkaliiekʃutak kaʃat́liiekʃupel ʃaxet marulehalnit́roja xret, eťatʂeakʃiliičatťroja tas t́umliihalniekʃuťroja kuxai xret, ʃuxritriljat tat́akneona sitaḱaliint́roja. 

Erþ řuk rikarloranna ʃuxona t́ičliipt́roja tle xeþliintat́roja. sux rikarloranna loranťikťu kuxaiera saadumora musulaliiptt́rojaekʃu tle leřuleeptaakʃilamťroja. lanarleečarpel třolhai lanarakʃileentxatjeťroja.

to kutamu parlo řuk kataloliiphalninat!

malarna třolhaiamu řuk katalolihalninat!

t́osaaiet t́eʂaleʂar sux koralekotana ʃaxona fuxliinpramyo!"

He remains stoic and resolute throughout his speech; from the look on his face and tone of voice, whatever it was that he just said was something very powerful and meaningful to him. His lip quivers for a moment, before he looks over at you with a glimmer of hatred in his eyes, which then softens. He then cautiously reaches out his hand and takes yours in his before simply gazing at you in a way that seems like he's studying you.

"What was that? It sounded important", you ask.

His face falters for a moment as he tries to find the words. He looks like he's going to give up even attempting to explain but then he speaks, "Very hard saying. Very old words. All Trolls knowing. Always knowing, always hoping. Can don't say. Very hard."

You nod in understanding, and squeeze his hand. "I think I want to lie down, maybe take a nap. Today's been..." you give a nervous laugh, "today's been a bit hard, right?"

Your body has certainly been through a lot, and after that meal it's _really_ starting to feel tired and sore since the last of your adrenaline has apparently worn off now that your body no longer senses danger.

He seems to not understand, "Want to lie down?" he says, questioningly.

"Uhh, sleep. I want to sleep. I woke up early and I'm tired now", you answer.

"OK"

You make your way upstairs, and don't realize he's following you until he enters your room instead of continuing on towards his.

You turn and face him, and he seems to sense your surprise. "Stay here OK?" he asks.

"Uhh..." you hesitate. "Sure, I guess."

You suddenly realize that he's probably been sleep deprived for years. You wonder how much of his bad attitude is due to his inherent personality, how much is due to how much he's been mistreated, and how much of may simply just be due to the fact that he's been running on adrenaline for so many years. When he's not in hyper-aggressive mode, he seems lethargic and listless; the anger in his eyes that he uses to cover up his fear is replaced with a forlorn tiredness that seems to be _begging_ for peace and sanctuary.

You sit on your bed, and he begins to remove his shirt while still standing. He pauses for a moment, freezing when he seemingly realizes that yes, you are indeed in the room with him and can see him and what he's doing. He lets a tired look of resignation show on his face before he just removes it and grabs a new one. When you see his body, your jaw drops.

He's literally _covered_ in scars. Some are old, some are more recent. Some are neat and straight, clearly caused by a bladed weapon. Some are rough and jagged, probably caused by blunt force trauma. Some are round and raised, obviously caused by cigarette burns or something similar. Some of the longer, deeper looking ones are dotted on both sides by a series of tiny points; clearly from having been sutured up. Some are obviously from being lashed, and still others you can't identify.

You reach out and touch one of them, whereupon Karkat inhales sharply and pulls back in surprise.

"S- sorry. I just- I didn't mean- I'm sorry," you stammer.

He stares at you for a moment, before walking closer. He pauses, then pulls your hand out and places it on his chest in invitation.

You hesitate for a moment, and then trace your finger over some of them, occasionally pausing to look up at his face. He'd seemed to have been clenching his jaw with his eyes closed at first, but nows seems to have relaxed somewhat. You move your fingers around slowly, touching them as if by doing so you can somehow magically and belatedly remove all the pain he felt when he received them. You brush over a small, and very prominent raised scar on the side of his ribcage at about his mid-line level and he inhales sharply while recoiling and brushes your hand away. It's then you realize that these are the scars from his grub legs.

You've read that they're almost like a belly button scar in that they're very sensitive and highly innervated; you remember people telling you the quickest way to lose an arm is to try touching a Troll's grub-scars so you quickly apologize to him and he reluctantly seems to allow you to continue touching the rest of his scars. He then allows you to turn him around and continue with the ones on his back. After a moment, you turn him around again and, catching sight of what looks like the worst of them, lean forward and give it a soft kiss. His skin seems to recoil in surprise at the kiss but he himself doesn't pull away.

You pull yourself back and apologize, realizing that you probably stepped over a line. No, you _definitely_ crossed a boundary of his but damned if he would dare to tell you so.

"I'm sorry they hurt you", you say. He seems to process the sentence for a bit, but makes no response.

The situation seems to be getting more awkward by the minute. You don't how to get out of this situation gracefully, so you do the only thing you can, "Uhmmm... good night", you say as you pull the covers over yourself as quickly as possible considering your lack of a fully functioning left arm. You position yourself with your back to him and just sit there, not hearing him move. Finally, he seems to crouch down and climb into his makeshift bed on the floor next to yours and makes himself comfortable enough to lie still.

Somehow, you managed to yet again take a situation and make it even more awkward than it was. 'Nice one John', you say to yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A translation of the story Karkat recites follows:_  
>   
>  This is the story of how our people came to be conquered. We were a strong, powerful people, with a strong military.  
> We conquered our planet's wilderness, leaving no area void of a troll. We covered the entire planet, and built a  
> great civilization. 
> 
> We eventually grew restless and anxious, with nowhere else to explore and conquer, so we built a fleet of  
> spaceships to search for new planets. We found a new, primitive planet called "Earth" and invaded. 
> 
> But the primitive inhabitants were able to steal our technology and enslaved us; the conquerors became the conquered.
> 
> Never forget who you are. Never forget how proud our people are. It may take a millenia, but we will  
> regain our rightful place in the universe.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _This is the same story, but with an interlinear gloss. The first line is Alternian. The second line is the interlinear gloss. The third line is an extremely literal translation of the Alternian. The fourth and final line is a much smoother translation into English:_
> 
>  
> 
> to pel trolaiona ʃičkaakʃileentaxatjeťrojapel čikuptanero.  
> QUES how Alternian-PL-ACC conquer-TRANSL-3PL/3PL-PFV-REM-MODIF story-PM.INAN.COPULA  
> A how Alternians became conquered story.  
> This is the story of how our people came to be conquered.
> 
> laeena xlorona ḱalarlaapťroja tas laeenaťroja kuxai njeratai.  
> power-ADJ military-ACC have-1PL/1SG-REM and strong-ADJ-REM 2PL-COPULA.ANIM.REM  
> Powerful military and strong powerful we were.  
> We were a strong, powerful people, with a strong military.
> 
> kuxaiera ʃuxera ʃaxnaloraona ʃičkaleenxatjeroka kuxai, trolaipel maruʃax njerahalniroka.  
> 2PL-GEN planet-GEN wild_place-ACC conquered-2PL/3SG-PFV-REM we-2PL Alternian-PL-MODIF exist_place COPULA.NEG.REM  
> Our planet's wilderness conquered we, a place that trolls not exist, is not.  
> We conquered our planet's wilderness, leaving no area void of a troll.
> 
> ʃeʃʃuxona sufatliinxatjeroka kuxai tle xat́na matana trolnat́ularattamiona sitaḱaliixatjeťroja.  
> entire_planet-ACC covered-2PL/3SG-PFV-REM we.2PL SUC great-ADJ civilization-ACC built-2PL/3SG-PFV-REM  
> Entireplanet had covered we, then great civilization had built.  
> We covered the entire planet, and built a great civilization. 
> 
> ʃičkaliiekʃutak kaʃat́liiekʃupel ʃaxet marulehalnit́roja xret,  
> conquer-2PL-POT-GRND explore-2PL-POT-MODIF place.ABS to_exist.3SG.NEG.REM because  
> Conquerable, explorable place not exist because,  
> With nowhere else to explore and conquer
> 
> eťatʂeakʃiliičatťroja tas t́umliihalniekʃuťroja kuxai xret,  
> feel_anxious-TRANSL.2PL-INTR-CONT-REM CONN rest-2PL-INTR-NEG-REM-POT we.PL-ERG because  
> Came to feel anxious and unable to rest we because,  
> We eventually grew restless and anxious
> 
> ʃuxritriljat tat́akneona sitaḱaliint́roja.  
> planet_search-PURPOSED space_ship-ACC to_build.2PL/3PL.REM  
> Planet searching spaceships built  
> So we built a fleet of spaceships to search for new planets.
> 
> Erþ řuk rikarloranna ʃuxona t́ičliipt́roja tle xeþliintat́roja.  
> Earth QUOT primitive-ADJ planet-ACC find-2PL/1SG-INTR-REM SUC invaded-2PL/3PL-INTR-REM  
> Earth-called primitive planet we found and we invaded them.  
> We found a new, primitive planet called "Earth" and invaded.
> 
> sux rikarloranna loranťikťu kuxaiera saadumora musulaliiptt́rojaekʃu tle leřuleeptaakʃilamťroja  
> but primivite-ADJ native_inhabitants-ERG 2PL-GEN technology-ACC steal-3PL/1PL.EXCL-REM-POT SUC enslave-3PL/1PL.EXCL-REM  
> But primitive inhabitants our technology was able to be stolen, then us enslaved  
> But the primitive inhabitants were able to steal our technology and enslaved us. 
> 
> lanarleečarpel třolhai lanarakʃileentxatjeťroja.  
> conquer-3PL-PROG-MODIF Alternian.PL-ERG conquer-TRANSL-3PL/3PL-PFV-REM  
> conquering Trolls have become conquered  
> The conquerors became the conquered. 
> 
> to kutamu parlo řuk kataloliiphalninat!  
> QUES you-PM.COPULA.ANIM who-SU.COPULA.ANIM QUOT forget-2SG/3SG-NEG-IMP  
> "Who you", do not forget!  
> Never forget who you are!
> 
> malarna třolhaiamu řuk katalolihalninat!  
> proud.ADJ Alternian.PL-PM.COPULA.ANIM QUOT forget-2SG-NEG-IMP  
> "Proud Alternians are", do not forget!  
> Never forget how proud our people are.
> 
> t́osaaiet t́eʂaleʂar sux koralekotana ʃaxona fuxliinpramyo!  
> millenia-PL-ABS to_pass_time-3SG-SPEC but riɡhtful-ADJ place-ACC sieze-2PL/3SG-ITER-VOC  
> millenia may pass, but rightful place sieze!  
> It may take a millenia, but we will regain our rightful place in the universe.


	8. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter! A little bit of background on what happened to Karkat emerges! Also, I realized the previous chapter got posted with a few typos. I thought I'd checked the spelling of it but somehow they got through >_> I guess this is what happens when one doesn't have a beta reader. I went back and corrected them. I apologize for that. I take a lot of pride in my writing and I really don't like it when things like that slip through.

You wake and turn over, cursing at yourself over the events of the past few days. You try to roll over and get comfortable again, but realizing that it's futile, you rise. You cast a glance at the form sleeping next to you. You'd never have realized something like this could have actually happened; never have realized that you could actually feel anything other than hatred and contempt for a human.

You sit for a moment, continuing to gaze at him. Even in his sleep he seems to be cradling his arm. At first, you were almost happy that he'd gotten what he deserved. Served him right for trying to force his language on you! Then you realized he could just send you away and, not being considered "docile" after your long history, the chances of you actually being sold again were slim to nil. Everyone knew what happened to trolls that couldn't be used anymore. You'd seen more than a few of your friends culled at the Academy for being marked incorrigible.

Your feelings then turned to pure self-preservation, or at least that's what you wanted to believe. The truth is, you felt that there was something different about John from the moment you first met. It was _so_ obvious he was crushing on you from the first moment. It was disgusting really. The idea that he'd think a troll could actually find a human attractive. Yet you can't deny the fact that he has certain troll-like features. His messy black hair for one. But the blunt teeth, lack of horns and claws, and the ability to tolerate such an extreme of cold is just _so_ alien to you.

Still, he seems to lack the cruel streak of violence, as well as the heart of pure hatred and contempt that seems so endemic to their race. You actually feel sorry that you hurt him now; not just once, but twice! He's just so unbelievably _stupid_ in so many ways that you get so irritated by him, but in other ways it's almost endearing. He's almost like a helpless grubling in a way. At first, you thought he was going to keep you as nothing more than a sex-slave, since at your puny size you knew the odds of you ever being tasked with any kind of real physical labor was slim.

Yet he's not only treating you like a friend, he actually seems to be _aware_ of the fact that he has so much power over you and is hesitant to use it or get too close to you. You don't feel the same way towards him as he does to you. At least, not yet. You clench your fist as you curse to yourself, ' _Not yet!?_ ' are you actually thinking that you _could_?

You place a hand on your stomach. The way he started feeling your scars caught you so completely off guard you'd just sort of frozen in place. He actually went so far as to kiss one of them! Angrily pulling the sheets off of yourself, you stand and return to your room, though still being careful not to wake him as you leave. As much as you hate to acknowledge it, it actually felt nice to have someone touch your body and not inflict pain in so doing. The kiss definitely freaked you out, but the fact that you not only have a human who's willing to protect you to an extent, but one who actually seems to care about you and your well being _does_ feel nice. Still, you can't help but wonder if the violent streak present in all the other humans you've seen to date will express itself in him eventually. Maybe it doesn't manifest until adulthood? What'll happen if you get closer to him and then one day he turns into a typical _human_?

You start laughing to yourself. Somehow, you just don't think he'd be smart enough to actually do any real harm. Even with the language barrier, it so fucking obvious that he's just stupid. Yet that too is also an endearing trait; for some reason you don't yet understand. You now wish that you hadn't stopped trying to learn their language. Sollux kept trying to push you. He was a genius when it came to learning their language and offered to tutor you many times. He kept telling you that if you could learn it well, you'd be much more likely to be bought by someone who would use you for skilled labor and have a much nicer life as a result. You called him a sellout and vowed to never have anything to do with them or their culture again. Not after that one incident.

He still tried to prod you from time to time, but he slowly backed off. You really miss him. The psi-trolls were systematically exterminated. Humans had no concept of psis outside of movies and fiction, and were terrified of anyone or anything that could read their minds or kill them with a single thought. He'd managed to hide his powers for a long time, but he slipped because he'd acted instinctively to help someone. You only saw him one more time after that and you still feel guilty to this day for not trying to help him.

They took him and subdued him immediately after he'd shown his powers. He'd screamed out to you telepathically for help, and started to say something, but the tranquilizers took effect quickly.

You'd all heard rumors of what they did to the "psis" as the humans called them, but you'd assumed it was just a ruse to scare people. You'd found out first-hand that it wasn't. You had been cellmates with each other, and the day they took him, you'd woken up in the middle of that night. You could've sworn you'd heard his voice calling out to you somehow.

Rising, you'd gone to the door and pushed on it. It opened. It was supposed to be locked. The locks were controlled electronically, so this shouldn't have been possible. Proceeding down the corridors, you'd found one unlocked door after another. Finally, you'd arrived in a section that was normally forbidden to trolls. Hearing muffled voices and cautiously proceeding, you saw two doors next to one another, obviously connected to adjoining rooms. The voices were coming from the farther door. Pressing your ear up against the closer one to make sure it was empty, you cautiously opened it just a crack and peeked in.

Seeing nothing, you cautiously opened it and stepped in to find you were behind what was obviously a one-way mirror. What you saw you will never forget. Sollux had been strapped down to an operating table. They were preparing for a vivisection. At first he seemed to be unconscious, but seeing him twitch occasionally as they made their preparations revealed that he was merely heavily sedated. His head had been shaved and they were mostly congregating around there. Hearing what sounded like a power tool activate, you noticed what it was. It was a surgical cranial saw. It was then that you noticed the electrodes they were preparing to insert. The feeling in your stomach was indescribable. You don't know how you managed to flee that room so quietly as to not attract attention, but when you were back into the non-restricted areas you ran faster than you've ever run before. Down the halls, through the corridors, back into your room.

Panting and shaking, you were terrified that they would do the same to you if they caught you. You tried to reassure yourself that they were only interested in experimenting on psis, but the fear was crippling. You would jump at the slightest noise for weeks after the fact. It was only after you'd realized that you'd fled unseen that the guilt started to kick in. 

' _What if I could've saved him?_ ', ' _What if I could've just killed him instead of leaving to that fate?_ ' The thoughts that filled your head and the guilt that accompanied them was even worse than the fear. It's something that you still carried with you to this day.

You'd changed that day. Permanently. All the other things that had changed you up until that point were things that you thought you could recover from. You knew you could change back; knew that you'd just created temporary barriers in your mind; temporary adaptations to a harsh and brutal life. Even the time that group of guards took you into a room for some personal ' _fun_ ' with you; all of that was something you could deal with. Not this though. Not after seeing what they did to Sollux. Humans were scum and had no redeeming qualities. None at all. You'd decided then and there that you wouldn't let them change you anymore than they already had. No more trying to be like them; no more of their conditioning; and no more of their language that they forced upon you. Up until now you'd vowed not to learn any more than you'd already had, but with this incident, you began to try to actively purge anything human that had been forced upon you and had ended up contaminating you with its mere presence in your mind.

But now with John, and your limited ability to communicate, you're coming to regret that decision somewhat. You sigh and wipe a tear from your face. ' _I wish I'd studied English more like Sollux said_ ', you think to yourself.

"Hey, how'th it going?" a voice calls out from behind you.

You spin around and stare in disbelief. You must finally be going mental. There's no way you can be seeing what you're seeing and still be sane. Somehow, you thought that insanity would be more... comfortable for lack of a better word. With less self loathing, and more maniacal laughter.

"No, you aren't insane. I'm not really here dumb-ath", the voice continues.

You're still too caught-up in disbelief to say anything.

"Dude, I was a pretty powerful psionic. I put a message in the thmall lump of flesh you call a brain. Pick your jaw up off the floor. Like I said. I'm not really here."

"Who- how- why? Why wait so damn long?" you say with just as much anger as surprise. "Why wait so long to show yourself?"

"' _Yourself_ '? I said I'm not really here. But if you mutht know. I left this apparition to wait until the day you decided not to be such a dumbass about learning their language."

"Says the guy who was a fucking _genius_ at it", you retort.

"That was because I could read their minds. I thorta absorbed it in small doses. Of course, the studying helped too."

' _Mothergrubfucker. No wonder he was so good at it!_ ', you think to yourself.

"I heard that", the apparition responds.

"Oh, fuck you! Didn't I always tell you to stay outta my head!?"

"Oh relax there's not much to see in here anyway. But if it bothers you that much, I guess I'll jutht fade away like the dispossessed ghost that I am."

"Wait!" you shout. Or at least as loud as you can without waking John.

"Oh, tho _now_ you want to talk. Make up your mind. By the way, why are you talking so softly?" the apparition asks.

"Because I don't want to wake up the guy in the room down the hall!" you whisper-shout.

"I meant why are you even talking at all. People are gonna think you're crazy for talking to someone only you can see and hear. I'm in you mind dumbass. I can hear your thoughts, remember?"

Sollux had a certain way with deadpan humor and observation that always drove you up the wall. "HOW ABOUT NOW!" you shout as loudly as possible inside your own head. "THAT LOUD ENOUGH FOR YOU!?"

He pulls his fingers out of his ears, "Yeah, now _that's_ that Karkat we all knew and loved."

"Anyway, why exactly are you here again?"

"It's too complicated to explain the details. But thuffice it to say that while I can't just download my knowledge of their language into your head, I can restore the engrams and pathways that already existed in your brain."

You sigh and rub your forehead at his _simple_ explanation.

"Thorry", he says. "Let me try again. I'll try to make it so simple that even you can understand. So basically, brains are like, use it or lose it. You quit studying their language a long time ago, so most of what you knew, you forgot. I can make it so that your knowledge goes back to that level. It won't change much. You'll maybe have a thousand more words in your vocabulary, and slightly better grammar, but hey it's still something."

Your head is still spinning. "When did you put this thing in my head?"

"Thing? Is that how you talk about me?" The apparition continues before you can scream at it again. "Right before they tranqed me. I knew I wouldn't have much time, so thith was all I could do."

"Well, that answers my next question: 'Of all the things you could put in my head, why this?'"

The Sollux apparition shrugs, "I figured you'd need it to survive, and like I said, it was all I could do in the few seconds I had before the guards got to me."

They all carried tranquilizers in addition to their batons and stun guns. The humans were deathly afraid of psis, and as soon as they had any proof or reason to believe that one of them had slipped through the cracks, they immediately swarmed them and incapacitated them.

"Why wait so long?" you ask.

"After I do this, it'll start to fade away again unless you use it. If you aren't gonna bother trying to thspeak their language and use it, there's no point."

"Hmph", you grunt. "Not even a ' _Hello_ ' or anything in the meantime?"

"I had to make sure this psychic energy could last a long time. You can be pretty damn stubborn."

"So how long does it take to restore these engrams?" you ask.

"I already did."

A bit dumbfounded, you're not sure what to say next. "Uh, thanks?"

"You're welcome", the apparition responds.

You stand there uncomfortably for a moment. "So now what? Do you just fade away? Or are you gonna be a regular feature in my head?"

"Unfortunately, or maybe I should say _fortunately_ , now that I've done my thing, I'm just gonna fade away. Psychic energy doesn't last forever you know."

The anger you had towards him dissipates somewhat. "How long do you have?"

It shrugs, "A few minutes, maybe less. I dunno, I've never done this before", it says calmly.

You look down at the floor for a moment before looking up at him again, "So you're all that's left of him then". You sigh, "Since I won't get another chance, I just wanna say that I appreciate your friendship. We were friends before this happened, and even after we were captured..." you swallow uncomfortably, "I think I kinda, I mean... since there wasn't really anyone else... you sorta filled the pale, ashen, black, and... flushed quadrants for me". Now that it's out in the open, it becomes easier for you to talk. "And I never said anything because I figured it would just cause more grief, and even though I told you to stay outta my head I could swear that I felt there were a few times where you went poking around. Did you know?"

The apparition remains quiet for a moment before speaking, "Yeah. And I didn't even need to get into your head to do that. You wear your emotions on your sleeve; no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise."

You take a step forward, "So I guess this is goodbye?"

He nods.

"Are you- can I touch you? I mean, will my hand just pass through you?" you ask.

"I'm as real as your mind makes me," he responds.

You take a step forward again, and open your arms. Stepping forward as well, the apparition slowly accepts your hug. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you", you say in tears.

"There was nothing you could've done. Don't beat yourself up. I don't blame you; I've never blamed you."

You squeeze him tight and, for a moment, you embrace the way you'd always wanted to. Then suddenly, your arms slap into your chest. Surprised, you take a step back and see the apparition fading away. "I love you!" you shout.

He smiles, "I know. Same here. And not just me", he says with a nod towards the door of your room.

Before you can ask what he means, he raises his hand and waves as he fades rapidly. In another second, he's gone.

You stand there, stunned, until you slowly move forward and reach out into the empty space where he stood only moments ago. Feeling only air, you take a step back and wipe the tears from your face. It does little good, because you start crying all over again as soon as you wipe them away. You don't even know what's come over you. For so many years, you hadn't shed a single tear. Now, all of a sudden, it's like everything has built up to the point that it's just bursting out. You feel weak. Like you're losing control. You can't contain and control your emotions anymore. Or maybe... maybe it's more that you don't feel the _need_ to do so as much anymore. You can't deny that you feel a certain level of safety here. Not just because John's not a personal, physical threat to you. It's more that you know that he just wouldn't hurt you.

It's also pretty damn obvious he's totally pale for you; and more than a little bit flushed too. You could see the look in his eyes from the day he first came over to your cage. At first, you thought only of how you could manipulate and use him. But now... now, as pathetic and weak as he is; as much as how on Alternia those qualities would either cause one to be culled as a grub, or opportunistically killed early in their second instar; you've somehow become... _attached_ to him. You don't feel the same way towards him as he does you, but you're definitely feeling a bit pale towards him, if only in a pitiable way.

You sigh and sit down. Grabbing one of the English books John bought for you, you open it up and flip through it. A lot of it still seems foreign and hard to read, but it _does_ actually seem like you remember more of the words now. The ones you knew from before Sollux restored your engrams also seem easier to read somehow. Maybe learning their language wouldn't be so bad after all. Humans may be scum, but John almost doesn't even seem human to you, which is a high compliment. It seems like a daunting task. English is so _fucking_ annoying with how many words it uses. Sometimes you wonder if humans get off on making up new, smaller words to replace the few bigger ones they have. And the word order! God fucking forbid if you say a word before another one when you're supposed to say it after! It totally changes the meaning of the sentence. "John gives to Karkat" and "Karkat gives to John" are totally opposite in meaning. Why couldn't they have a more logical language like Alternian where it only changes the nuance? Sometimes you wonder if the humans' self-loathing and rage towards others, often including their own kind, is a result of how insanely difficult their language is. And the sounds! They think Alternians are savage? Try listening to a language that can have four, count them, _four_ consonants all in a row in a single syllable! And then they usually have those four consonants butted up against another three in the next syllable for a total of **_SEVEN. FUCKING. SYLLABLES. IN. A. ROW!_** Not even _they_ can pronounce all of them, and they seem to just randomly drop them whenever it seems convenient, yet they still manage to understand each other somehow.

You flip through the book, trying to learn what you can. You jot down a few notes in it to ask John about later, though you don't have high hopes of necessarily understanding everything; the best you can probably hope for is to say a sentence and ask him if it's grammatical or not by just saying, "OK?".

Speaking of which, it sounds like he's woken up; as evidenced by the sound of the bathroom door closing. You compose a few more sentences in your notebook for later and head back towards his room after you hear his door open and close again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karkat's rant about English phonology, phonotactics, and its lexicon is 100% based in fact. If you're a native speaker, you may not even realize just how many consonants we try to cram together, and how many of them just fall out of words when we speak quickly. If you're a non-native speaker (and also _aren't_ a native speaker of a consonant-heavy language like the Germanic or Slavic families) or learned a more vocalic language like Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Maori, etc. as a second language, then you probably already realize this though ^_^
> 
> And for anyone wondering, this wasn't a Deus ex machina to get Karkat fluent in English. The language barrier is still there and quite strong, it's just a bit narrower than it used to be.


	9. Heliopause

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, but a chapter nonetheless!

You rise and head over to John's room, carrying your notebook. Stopping, you peek through the sliver of the slightly open door.

"Oh, come in", he says, opening the door and adjusting the t-shirt he's obviously just put on.

"Umm, are this OK?" you say, showing him the notebook in your hand.

He looks at the notebook for a moment before taking it from you. "They're not that bad. They're cer****ly understandable", he says, before taking out a pencil. "Want me to correct them?"

"Yes", you say, before adding a "please" to the end.

He makes a few small changes to some of them. One of them he rewrites completely. "This one was OK, but it sounds better to write it like this. Do you understand?"

You look at the sentence he rewrote, and though you don't actually understand it 100%, you nod and say that you do.

You stand there uncomfortably for a moment before trying to break the ice. "Show me your arm".

He hesitates for a moment. "Can I correct you?"

You're a bit taken off guard, but nod affirmatively.

"It's better to say, ' _Can I see your arm please?_ ' or ' _Would you show me your arm?'_."

You're a bit irritated at being corrected, but try to internalize it as best you can. "Would you show me your arm please?" you say.

He sits on his bed and motions for you to do the same. You do so and he offers his arm to you. You gently take it and give it a few sniffs. It doesn't smell like the infection in it is nearly as bad as it was before, and you can smell what can only be described as "the smell of healing" permeating the bandages. You release it and speak to him. "Arm is OK. Bad smell weaker, good smell stronger."

"Is your s**** of smell really that much better than ours?"

You hear most of the words, but don't grasp the overall meaning. "What?" you say.

"Oh, sorry. Uhh, do trolls smell better than humans? Do trolls have better noses than humans?"

It takes you a second to process the sentence, but you think you get it. "Yes. We can smell good. Humans have poor at smelling." You look down and realize that while you've released his arm, you're still holding his hand. You weren't even aware that you were holding it. You slowly but assertively pull your hand away from his. It all seems to hit you at once; you're in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, side-by-side, and he's totally pale and flushed for you. You feel a strong sense of revulsion and quickly stand. "OK, thank you. I'm happy arm is OK", you say as you make a hasty retreat to your room. Entering, you close your door and quickly grab a dirty shirt and do the best you can to shove it under the door to make a crude doorstop.

You don't understand why it's all hitting you at once. You knew he was pale-flushed for you from the moment he first laid eyes on you back when you were in your cage. _WHY_ does it disgust you so much now? You sit down and rake your fingers through your hair. It just doesn't seem to make any sense. Then, the realization strikes you. It's because you're actually starting to accept his friendship, and may even be starting to feel a little pale towards him too. You groan out loud and pull on your hair when you realize you may even be feeling the beginning tinges of a flushed romance in addition to the pale friendship that already seems to be there.

The humans managed to do it. Somehow, despite your best efforts, they managed to infiltrate your mind and made it so that somehow, by some means, you're _actually_ starting to feel like the humans may not be so bad, and could actually be nice on occasion. You have to put a stop to this. You don't care about your body, you don't even care about your life anymore. If there's anything in the next world, you know that you can't look back on your life in this plane of existence and realize that the humans managed to beat you down to the point that you considered one of them worthy of your friendship, let alone any kind of a stronger relationship.

This ends here, and _now_. He's one of them. He's still trying to change you, just like the other ones did back at the Academy.

Taking a deep breath you realize your reaction can't be too hasty. It's time to weigh your options. One, you could just kill John. You could murder him in his sleep and try to make a clean getaway. You'd probably have a few days before anyone found the body, so if you could make it deep enough into a forest somewhere, you think you could survive just hunting the local fauna. You could also be much more cruel and face him when you did the deed. Disembowelment or slitting his throat would normally be your preferred method, especially being sickle-kind, but strangulation would allow you to see the fear and experience the feeling of betrayal in his eyes as he sees you slowly squeeze the life out of him.

You pause for a moment. If John were to feel betrayal at your murdering of him, wouldn't that mean that some of his feelings for you were genuine? That he's not simply acting? You're trying to process the information; to reconcile how everything fits together. The answer you arrive at is even more sick than you'd thought before. The humans must be preying on their own young! Using them and exploiting them to further their own agenda! John may actually have no idea how things are at the Academies and may not have been acting when he showed concern for you. He may be just as much a victim in this as you are! Is it fair to blame him for the crimes of his species? Maybe it would still be better to just kill him though. It would be a mercy-killing to prevent him from having to endure whatever may lie ahead of him when the adult humans decide to come after him.

"FUCK", you yell out as quietly as possible in Alternian.

If you're willing to mecry kill him, then it still means you must care about him at some level. If not, you'd have no problem just leaving him to whatever his fate may be.

You need to leave. You need to leave NOW. You rake your hands through your hair again. ' _Calm down Karkat_ ', you think to yourself, ' _Don't do anything hasty_.' You think for a moment and decide that leaving in the middle of the night is your best bet. It'll give you a chance to get far enough away before anyone comes looking for you. You remember seeing a small mountain range in the distance. You could probably make it there on foot in anywhere from 2–7 days depending on how direct or indirect of a route you have to take. Once there, you could probably live indefinitely on the native flora and fauna in the area. Your tracking collar would still be a liability, but you could just claw off the flesh once you got there. Doing it too early would leave a blood trail they could follow, yet doing it too late would lead them too close to where you were. You definitely need to at least wait until you're outside of town. After that... you'll claw off the collar; blood-loss be damned, and just take things day-by-day.

It's also probably better to just leave John without saying good bye. He's obviously pale-flushed for you, but maybe it's better that his heart get broken by an Alternian so he sticks with his own kind. It's not like the odds of any other Troll finding a human attractive are that high to begin with anyway; better he stick with his own.

You decide to just play like things are normal and leave in the middle of the night. You want to get some sleep now so you'll be awake later and have more energy. You decide to tell John that you're going to take a nap so he won't disturb you. Leaving your room, you return to his room and lightly knock on the half-open open door before pushing it open more.

"Yes?" he says.

"Umm, I want sleep now. Feel sleepy. Please don't wake up?"

"Okay, but it's only three o'clock. Do you want me to wake you for dinner?"

You process the sentence for a moment, "No, please put dinner in... in..." you're struggling to think of the word you want, "Please put dinner in cold-box", you say, realizing that the word isn't going to come to you; what you said should still be understandable.

"Okay", he says, flashing you a soft smile. Somehow it seems like it's a bit forced though. You wonder if he may suspect that you're planning to flee tonight. He's definetly stupid and clueless, but he's not an idiot.

"Thank you", you say, and return to your room. You're actually not really that tired, but you figure even if you can't sleep, just resting your body will help. You wander over to the window and stare outside. It's a really nice looking neighborhood. Pushing everything else away, if you could manage to build a life here, it wouldn't be so bad. You start imagining what you could do if you were one of them; if you were human. You could use your knowledge of Alternian science and technology to get a good job; probably even start your own company. You wouldn't have to worry about being culled by the other humans for being a mutant. They seem to take care of their own kind no matter what; major wars and atrocities excepted of course. You could come home to this house, and to John. ' _To John..._ ', you realize that you _could_ see yourself building a life with him, at least in some kind of parallel universe, but not here; not now. Not in these circumstances. You have to leave all of this behind, for both your sakes.

Sighing, you head to the pile of clothes and whatnot strewn about a mattress lying on the floor. John actually put human bedsheets and blankets on the mattress, and then scattered the other various things on top of it, clearly so you could have your choice of whichever you preferred. You shove some of the clothing under the sheets and climb under them, leaving about half of the stuff lying on top of the sheets, and half under them. You grab a big pile of whatever and pull it close; both for warmth and psychological comfort. You used to pretend that you were curled up with another person occasionally for the comfort it offered you back at the Academy. It's something that's still with you now. You slow your breathing and try to focus on what John's doing in the other room across the hall. You can't hear much, but oddly enough you find comfort in just listening to him. You tell yourself it's only to keep tabs on him for your own sake and the fact that you're planning on escaping tonight, but it's also nice just sort of listening to him regardless.

You slowly begin to doze off despite having so recently awoken from a previous slumber. No doubt all the stress you've been under lately, not to mention for so many years, has sapped so much of your strength. You just feel so _exhausted_ when you don't have adrenaline to keep you awake that you go from being high-strung and full of energy to almost literal collapse if you can manage to turn the flow of it off. The cases where you can't, you end up tossing and turning most of the night, waking at the slightest noise. At least being here with John you feel safe enough to actually let go long enough to sleep for a bit...


	10. Helioshock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so… a new chapter six months later. I apologize for the delay. Life events really got in my way for a long time. It seems to be a recurring theme here >_>. I wanted to get this posted since I had a brief opportunity to write bit more. Not sure when the next opportunity will be. Hopefully not as long as this one took...

You wake later. You’re not sure what time it is. You listen for a moment, and the house seems quiet. You cautiously open your door, and see a faint light coming from under John’s door. You carefully creep by, heading downstairs to eat. Opening the fridge, you find a plate covered in plastic obviously made for you. You clench your teeth at the fact that that _bastard_ just _coddles_ you so damn much. You grab the plate and eat the food cold. You glance at the microwave and see that it’s a few minutes past 11:30. You figure you’ll leave between 1:00 and 2:00. That should be late enough to avoid John and most other people, but still early enough to let you cover enough ground by daybreak.

You return to your room and simply wait. It’s absolutely _agonizing_ just sitting in your room plotting, waiting, planning, calculating. You make a mental note of what you’re going to need to make the break. A backpack, some non-perishable food, a change of clothing, a blanket. You gather up what you can in your room in terms of a change of clothes and a blanket, but you can do nothing more until later. Patience…

After waiting for what feels like far too long, you quitely make your way downstairs. Carefully stepping on the outside of the steps to avoid making the looser panels creak, you make your way into the garage. You quietly close the door and, only when it’s completely shut, turn on the light and look around for something you can use. You find a disused backpack lying on a shelf. It’s bright and colorful, and clearly something a child would use. You debate whether the risk of using it and making yourself more visible because of its bright colors is worth the convenience it would offer. Deciding against it, you put it back and continue searching. You find a small satchel and carefully remove it from where it was lain, quietly dumping out its contents as you do so. You also grab a flashlight you see lying nearby.

Returning to the house, you enter the kitchen and grab any cans that have pull-tops, not caring what they contain. You take any boxes of ready-made, single-serve food too: granola bars, fruit bars, candy, it doesn’t matter. You then put on a hoodie and head out the front door. For all the planning you’ve done, all the anxiety this has caused you up until now, it was surprisingly easy to pull off. You pull the hood over your head to help disguise your horns and ashen skin, and make your way towards the mountains while trying to stay on the less lit side of the sidewalks.

You make your way to a large, densely forested park. Though it’s less of a park and more of a designated woodland area with trails in it to hike. You walk through it, following the trails as they wind around. Reaching a fork in the road, you head in the direction that seems to be leading further towards the mountains in the distance. You press on in the dark, using your flashlight as little as possible; both to avoid giving yourself away and to preserve its batteries. Your eyes are much better adapted to the dark than the humans' are, so you manage fairly well when all things are considered.

You continue to make your way forward and come upon another fork in the road, but something doesn’t seem right. Looking around, you spot a few familiar sights, and it takes all of your self-control not to scream out in rage when you realize you’ve just walked in a giant circle. It feels like an hour has been wasted, and you don’t have more than a few hours before dawn. You think back at how this could’ve happened. You don’t remember getting turned around, but your mind was so busy thinking about so many other things it may have actually happened without you even realizing it. You wonder again at how many hours you’ve lost. It felt like at least one, but you know your sense of time is being altered by the level of adrenaline in your blood. It may have only been minutes, or it could have been much longer. You look up at the sky, and realize the moon hasn’t moved enough to suggest more than an hour or so. You take solace in the fact that you still have a good chunk of the night to press on before daybreak as you walk up to a signboard with a map of the park.

Taking out your flashlight, you peer at the map and try to get your bearings. You clench your teeth and grip the flashlight even harder when you realize that you just walked in a giant circle. That is to say, this part of the park is a giant loop that _has_ no other exits or forks. You realize that you’d either have to go forward through the loop again, and head into the rough part-way through, or backtrack and take a different path. While you’d lose even _more_ time if you were to backtrack, you decide that the risk of getting lost again, coupled with the fact that you’d be moving slower anyway as soon as you head off of the marked trails, that both options are basically the same time-wise. Realizing you’d be more likely to reach your destination were you to head back and take the marked trails, you decide to do just that. You grumble to yourself as you turn around and head back the way you came.

You head back, counting the other trailheads as they pass. One, two, three… at the third one you turn left onto it and press on. You continue to move forward and start to get an eerie feeling, like you’re being watched somehow. You stop dead in your tracks and freeze. Pausing to listen to the world around you, you don’t hear anything unusual. Pulling your hood back, you use your horns' limited sense of infra-sonic sensitivity to scope out your surroundings as well. If only you’d had horns the size of Tavros or Gamzee, you’d have been much more able to pick up even the faintest of vibrations. Satisfied that nothing is imminently present, you head on, though somewhat more cautiously than before.

You continue forward, and eventually come across a short bridge spanning a small creek. Pausing to get your bearings, you surveil your surroundings. The bridge is only about 10 meters long, and is maybe about 2-3 meters above the water. Looking up at the sky, you can see from where the moon is that you’re heading in the right direction. You pause to take in the tranquility of the scenery for a moment. The creek is small, and doesn’t have much water flowing through it. Though during the rainy season, it looks like it regularly increases in height, given that the rocks and plants growing around its banks show ample evidence of regular flooding.

You take a deep breath and close your eyes as you feel the chill in the air. It’s so much colder here than on Alternia, though your memories of it are few though treasured. You were taken not long after you shed your pair of grub-legs, and you don’t have many solid memories of your home planet. Somehow, the chill almost feels _nice_ in a way. The crispness of the air is actually kind of novel and refreshing. You can feel that the skin on your face is cold, and maybe it’s just because the nerves have been partially numbed, but it doesn’t seem to bother you that much anymore.

You take a slow, deep breath when you hear a scuffling sound. Immediately your eyes open, though you don’t make any sudden movements. You know that human’s eyes, much like Alternians', are extremely sensitive to movement and often won’t register that being is present if it doesn’t move; it blends in too well with an unmoving background. It’s only when you hear it getting closer that you spin around quickly; better a sudden movement and a sudden stop than slow, deliberate movement. It often fools predators into thinking they imagined seeing something. In the times it doesn’t, it still won’t allow them enough of a reference point to lock on to anything in particular; especially in poor lighting conditions.

You can tell it’s getting closer. It could just be a night-owl out for a hike, but you’re not going to take any chances at being spotted regardless. You deftly hop over the railing of the bridge onto the soft ground below and take shelter underneath it. Better to just wait for them to pass overhead.

The sound gets closer and closer. Your heart beats faster and faster. Closer still it comes. You steady your breathing; not wanting to make the slightest bit of noise. It gets closer still, and begins passing over the bridge. You see a faint glow of light. It’s too dim to be a flashlight. It must be from a cell phone. The footsteps pass over the bridge and then stop. You wait breathlessly for it to start moving again. It turns around and begins walking towards you again. You feel your body tense up. ‘ _Calm down Karkat, maybe they’re just lost_ ’, you say to yourself. It passes over you again and continues on. You let out a quiet sigh of relief. Suddenly it stops yet again, and turns back towards the brigde.

‘ _Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ ’, you chant to yourself. It couldn’t possibly have noticed you. It _must_ be lost. There’s no way you could be found so quickly. It’s obviously a human, and it’s obviously alone, so it doesn’t have the benefit that a canine or other olfactorily-gifted animal would have. It _has_ to just be coincidence.

It stops directly above you, and paces too and fro a few steps in either direction. “Karkat?” it calls out. ‘ _Mothergrubfucker_ ’, you’d recognize that voice anywhere. “Karkat?!” it yells out again, “Where are you?”

You want to just die right now. He couldn’t even leave you alone for a few hours!? Was he checking up on you? How the fuck did he get here so quickly?

“Karkat! I know you’re here! Just come out!”

Fuck him! Maybe if you wait he’ll get bored and leave.

You hear a faint click, followed by the tell-tale beam of light that emanates from a flashlight. You see the beam sweep around on top of the bridge from the way the light shines down through the small gaps in-between the boards. You see it shine left and right into the trees and shrubbery around, as John paces around the bridge.

Still waiting silently, you hear him walk back the way he came, and then around the railing onto the soft, grassy ground below.

‘ _Fuck_ ’, you begin to resign yourself to being found. You’re now deciding whether or not to fight, or just make a break for it when you’re inevitably discovered. He gets closer and closer until he’s standing right next to you, then moves a bit closer towards the water. He then pokes his head under the bridge and looks around. First forward, then backward. You keep one eye shut and the other in an almost total squint to minimize any eyeshine. He only shines the light on you for a moment, before moving on. Before you can consider the possibility that he hasn’t seen you, the light comes right back and stays there.

“Are you OK? Why didn’t you answer me?” he asks.

You open your eyes as he moves a bit closer, but is still staying outside of the overhanging bridge. He crouches down as he gets closer. He sees your backpack, and everything else seems to fall into place for him.

“You ran away didn’t you?”

You don’t respond.

He lifts up his cell phone and turns it around to show you the screen. “It’s the latest thing. You can track your- You can track the tracking collars with your phone now,” he offers in explanation and anticipation of the question that is absolutely on your mind.

‘ _Fuck!_ ’ You’d thought that only the Hunters, as they were called, had access to that kind of technology. Of course, you should’ve figured they’d use their stolen Alternian technology in the most oppressive way possible. But that still doesn’t explain—

“I had a feeling you were gonna do something like this. I could tell you were acting differently today.” He giggles. “Im****e finding you here, a troll under a bridge!” He giggles again and you just want to _strangle_ him; to shut him up forever, to _squeeze_ that STUPID _fucking_ grin right off his face and _force_ him to hate you the way all other humans do.

But fuck you and fuck everything else. That, at least, explains how he knew to come looking for you so soon. You’d been thinking that maybe you’d accidentally made a noise or something when you were leaving the house. Or maybe he’d been a big enough dick that he was actually checking up on you every night without you actually having noticed it. At least you know you were quiet enough when you left the house earlier.

“Come on, let’s just go home. I’m not mad at you. I probably would’ve done the same…” he says.

You’re just _so_ , _fucking_ , _pissed_ right now that you’re absolutely speechless.

“Fuck off!”, you mutter at him.

“Come on, it’s late. Don’t be that way. Where would you go anyway?” he asks.

“Away.” you respond. “Far away. Onto the mountains. Inside the forest.”

He frowns. “There’s nothing in there except bears, poisonous plants, and pi******s. You’d have a hard time sur****ing.”

You don’t respond.

“C'mon! Whatever you wanted out there, lets talk. I know you don’t like being inside the house all day. We can make some ideas together. We can talk about some new things to do. We can make a way for you to be happy.”

You’re not sure what’s worse: the times he overly dumbs down his English in an attempt to be comprehensible like he's doing now, or the times he forgets and just prattles on at you like you’re a native speaker. Defeated, you realize at this point there’s not much point in continuing. He’d just call in a Hunter if you refused to leave with him now, and at least if you go back to the house with him you might find another chance at escape sometime soon.

Silently and begrudgingly, you slide over towards him, forcing him to back away to make room for you to get out from under the bridge. You roll out from under the bridge, reaching back under and pulling out your “ _borrowed_ ” satchel before standing and glaring at him blankly.

“OK, lets go!” he says with a cheerful smile. You take a few steps forward, but pause and wait for him to take the lead; you’re not going to feel like you’re being marched back. Though now by following him in the rear you wonder if being led back is all that much better. He casts a few glances back, making sure you’re still following, but does so less and less as you make more progress towards your goal. Paradoxically, though lost in thought, your mind seems blank. You’re not sure if you’ve just tuned everything out, if there are so many thoughts vying for attention that it’s like those comedy bits where two people try to go through a door at the same time and get stuck shoulder-to-shoulder, or if there really is nothing left to think about for the moment.

Reaching the last stretch, you’ve now returned to the large open promenade lined with a stretch of lampposts, each having had large trash cans rather unceremoniously placed beneath them. Up until now, you’ve been surrounded by trees, foliage, and nature, but this dirt trail gives way back into the suburban landscape around it and you just stop. You stop and you stand. For some reason, it hasn’t seemed real to you yet. But now… now you know you’re going back into that life; the life of a slave. You just can’t do it. You’d rather die standing than live kneeling.

John stops and turns back. He opens his mouth to say something but then closes it again. He seem to be struggling to find the right words to say. “I know you don’t want to come back, but isn’t this better than any other alter***ive? I can’t set you free. If I could, I would, because I can see how much you hate living with me,” he pauses for a second “…how much you hate _me_ ,” he adds.

You look up, and see him genuinely concerned for you. You still don’t understand how a human could actually care for you in any real way. There has to be some catch; there just _has_ to. Maybe he’s hoping that you’ll turn flushed for him, the way he obviously feels about you now. Sure, he’s pale for you too, but you realize now that he’s far more flushed for you than you realized before.

“But I don’t care,” he continues. “Even if you hate me, I don’t hate you. I _know_ we can find a way to live together and be happy. Even if I have to se***on off the house and give you your own apartment.” He smiles at you again, “So don’t lose hope! I’m your friend! I care about you!”

You almost literally feel something snap inside your head at that last comment. ‘ _Friends? He thinks we’re friends? He thinks he cares about me?_ ’ It’s all too much. That stupid smile, those stupid ideas, that stupid cheerfulness. You’re going to end this. You’re going to end _him_!

You lunge forward and wrap your hands around his throat. He struggles at first, but you’re not squeezing hard enough to cut off his airflow completely. He first tries to pull your hands away. When that doesn’t work, he tries to work his fingers under yours and pull them away. When he realizes that he can’t loosen your grip even _if_ both of his arms had been uninjured and working properly, he gently places his hands over your wrists and just… stares at you defiantly.

You squeeze harder. He struggles to swallow and pulls on your hands before returning to just being passive. ‘*Motherfucker I **will** make you hate me!*’ you think to yourself as he continues to stare at you defiantly despite the fact that his face is starting to turn red.

Losing any sense of this being a contest, you call his bluff and tighten your grip completely. Human necks feel so… squishy. While they have some harder, bonier parts where the cartilage and hyoid bone lie, they seem much weaker and more tender than Alternian necks.

He struggles a bit more, then stops. You can see the panic building in his eyes. He’s trying to call _your_ bluff now. Too bad for him he doesn’t know this isn’t a bluff. You’re going to kill him. You’re going to kill him, knowing that right before he blacks out he’s going to realize that you’re a being worthy of contempt. Then you’re going to be picked up by a Hunter. There’s no sense in even bothering to run; you’re going to just turn yourself in. Then you’ll be summarily executed, safe in the knowledge that all humans are scum.

As the life begins to drain from his face, he makes one last vain attempt to free himself from your grip. Defeated, he slowly reaches out a hand towards your face. His eyes are glassy and he’s uncoordinated; already feeling the effects of hypoxia. Turning your head to protect your eyes from what you think is an imminent attempt to gouge them out, his fingers brush against your cheek and… stroke it? You pause for a moment, waiting for his death-throes to cause him to try one last-ditch attempt at saving himself but… he’s just stroking your cheek?

You turn to look at him, and see him smiling that stupid, goofy smile. His eyes are bloodshot, his cheeks are flushed with backed-up and pooled blood, and his face looks like the twisted visage of an evil clown as he fights to smile with your hands wrapped around his neck. But despite all of that… it’s still that same goofy smile and he’s _still_ trying to show you affection even with his dying breath.

You throw him to the ground and turn your back to him. You hear him smack against the gravel as he starts alternately coughing and sucking in thick, wheezing lungfuls of air. You feel so _disgusted_ with the idea that a human could _still_ feel affection towards you that you just couldn’t bear to look at or even touch him. You wipe your hands on your pants because they feel contaminated somehow.

Still coughing, you hear him scoot back and lean up against one of the large, concrete trashcans under one of the many streetlights as he tries to regain his breath. He then starts laughing. “I guess this is gonna be par for the course huh? You attack me—try to kill me, and I just find some way to ignore it huh?” He seems to be talking to himself as much as he is to you.

“I am sorry I—” you can’t continue. The image of his face, so swollen and red, still lingering in your mind; the thought of him literally being seconds away from death at your own hand and yet _still_ not capable of hating you even as the capillaries in his face began to burst as his eyes slowly rolled up into his head… Somehow… you actually feel guilty for hurting him, _again_. You turn and crouch down in front of him, but still keep some distance. You want to reach out, to touch him, to touch his face the same way he did yours but you’re afraid to even come near him since this makes _two_ times you’ve hurt him now.

You hear a distant car come closer and slow down. The smile suddenly leaves John’s face as he quickly turns to peer around the trashcan. “Oh shit. Get down!” he says as he turns back to you.

You remain there, not sure what’s going on, and he then lunges forward and grabs you as tightly as he can. You squirm around a bit as he grips you close to him, even going so far as to use his legs to scoot yours closer together. “Be quiet!” he whispers as loud as he can.

You hear a car door open and your whole body stiffens up as you realize what’s going on. You hear the sound of feet on the gravel. Followed by the sound of the tell-tale _crunch crunch_ of the gravel as they approach. You hear the click of a flashlight, as well as see the larger spotlight begin to sweep around that could only come from patrol car. You slow your breathing as much as you can and stay as still as you can.

“Anybody out there!”

Hearing the voice from the distance causes your stomach to sink. You can even feel John’s body stiffen up too.

“Hello!”

You hear the footsteps move around, coming closer. Then… you can’t quite tell. Are they coming closer? Or are they pacing side-to-side? You wait breathlessly for what seems like ages, when you hear the car door slam and the engine rev up as it moves off into the night.

You both remain quiet and motionless. As if trying to wait out the man standing out there who is trying to wait _you_ out. Maybe he slammed the door and told his partner to circle around, trying to fool you into revealing yourself. The two of you wait, clinging as tightly to each other as you would a tree branch were you hanging over a chasm. You can feel his heartbeat, feel his breath on your face, and can _smell_ him too. From a distance humans are mostly the same. Just like with a wet dog, if you’ve smelled one, you’ve smelled them all, but having spent the last few days with him, you can certainly identify a few unique characteristics of his scent beyond the others. You can feel the warmth of his skin, your face pressed up against the side of his own.

Slowly turning your head to face his cheek, you inhale and take in his scent. Somehow, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s not the same as the stench of the other humans in the Academy. It definitely has the smell of youth in it, even had you not known his species, you would be able to smell the universal scent of “youth”. Without thinking, you press your lips up against his cheek, wanting to feel his skin against your lips. You certainly didn’t want to _kiss_ him; all you wanted was to feel if his skin was as thin and weak as it looked. He pulls away and gently pushes you back all the same. “I think they’re gone” he says.

Realizing that the danger has passed now, you slowly lean back and try to think up some kind of explanation to offer him. Before you can come up with anything, he speaks.

“Uhh, lets go home. OK? I’m tired.”

“OK” you respond.

You stand and follow him home. You feel like you’re completely in a daze. Why are you going back? Why are you following him so willingly? How do you think he’s going to treat you now that you’ve attacked him not once, but _twice_. Is he going to change his mind and turn you in? Why do you have these feelings for him? Are they real? What exactly _are_ you feeling anyway? You don’t exactly feel flushed towards him. Is it pale? Ashen? Caliginous? Is it just because he’s treating you nicely? But isn’t being treated nicely more of a reason to _like_ someone than to _hate_ them?

Before you realize it, you’re back home. ‘ _Home_ ’ Are you already thinking of this place as your home now? He opens the front door and turns on the lights.

“Go put all that stuff back,” he says as he climbs the stairs and shuts himself in the bathroom.

You do as he says, wanting to apologize to him somehow. You put the food back in the pantry, and place the other objects where you found them, or at least as close to where you can remember finding them in the first place. Hearing the door upstairs open, you head up to see him.

He’s halfway through the door to his room when he stops and turns around. You open your mouth to speak, but before you can say anything, he speaks clearly and slowly, trying to ensure you’ll understand.

“Listen. You can’t hurt me again. It’s not OK.” You see bruises beginning to form on his neck. They’re not that bad now, but they’re going to be hell come morning. “This is your last chance; your last time. If you hurt me again, you leave. Understand?”

You nod sheepishly.

“Repeat what I said so I know you understand.”

In any other situation, being asked such a childish thing would’ve inflamed you, but in this case you understand why he's asking this.

“No more. If I hurt you again, I must leave. I’ll go back. To Academy. I’ll die.”

He seems to be slightly fazed by the last sentence, but clearly already knows it. You know that the only reason you’ve been given a _third_ chance is precisely because of that fact.

“Yes, you will.” You’re surprised at his directness; the tone of his voice is unnaturally stern for him too. “You _can’t_ hurt me. You _can’t_ hurt people. I can’t—” For a moment, it seems like he’s about to break down into tears. “I can’t live like this!” he yells. "No more! No more chances! Now go to bed!“ he says as he shuts the door in your face.

Stunned at not having seen him like this before, you can do nothing else but do as he says. You turn and enter your room, pondering everything that’s happened over the last few days. You can’t seem to make much sense of it at the moment, so you decide to just try to lie down. For once, you _actually_ feel truly guilty at having hurt him. What you initially felt for injuring his arm was more of a fear of retribution. What you feel now is true remorse. You shut your eyes and try to put your mind on a blank piece of scenery. You slowly start adding in trees, bushes, a sky, a river, and before you know it you’re fast asleep.


End file.
